


Le Chant Des Oiseaux

by charredwood



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-29
Updated: 2011-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-21 23:15:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charredwood/pseuds/charredwood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The spring Sam turned twelve spawned a summer of vicious heat. Dean spent most of it bored out of his mind, while Sam whiled away the hours poring over books of birds. One stifling hot summer night, Dean finds a feather, gifting it to Sam. Years later, angry at Sam's flight to Stanford, Dean burns the feather Sam had returned to him.</p><p>A year since Sam fell into the Pit, Dean sleep walks through a parody of suburban life with Lisa and Ben. Nights he isn't crawling into a bottle, he spends grieving in the Impala. Castiel appears there one night with a barely alive Sam, refusing all questions. A year more passes as Dean struggles to care for a hell damaged Sam who eventually reaches relative lucidity.</p><p>A normal night suddenly turns bloody and violent in the patchwork household. In the swirling aftermath, Sam's youthful fixation on birds rears its head once more as Dean discovers the stunning choice Sam made to replace that simple feather and how it will save all their lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The spring Sam turned twelve spawned a summer of vicious heat. The temperature soared into the triple digits, the humidity trailing not far behind. No matter where their father steered the Impala, Georgia across to Louisiana, up to Oklahoma, past Kansas and into Pennsylvania, the three of them, Dean, Sam, and their dad, spent days melting into the leather seats, their shirts shucked to maximize the breeze hurtling through the open windows across their salty, slick-sweat skin.

Evenings found them traipsing from motel to motel searching for a working air conditioner to ease the oppressive heat that soaked into their bones all day. Dean prayed for a swimming pool to float in; all the better for water to soothe his sweltering body. Never mind the pools where often green from chlorination so high it burned his eyes and nose. Or the detritus of previous guests’ stays, garbage blown into the water, the dead squirrel come to slacken its thirst only to succumb to the poisonous mixture.

John was mostly incommunicative. Grunts of assent when either boy pleaded for a pit stop, or sighs of disapproval when they would both beg for one more day to luxuriate in the moldy cool air of a water-stained motel room. “We’re not on vacation, and hunting don’t take a backseat to nothing, boys. The demon’s out there, and there’s always things to hunt. C’mon, now.”

Except there wasn’t _anything_ to hunt. Not that whole summer, marked off between Memorial and Labor Day. Werewolves, selkies, wendigos, not even a demon come to play puppet master topside for a while blipped on the hunting radar. Across their travels, the newspapers alternated between glumly reporting on the endless drought and unrelenting heat, with half-witty recounts of watermelon festivals and strawberry pie eating contests.

It was maddeningly, suffocatingly boring. Next to his dad in the passenger seat, Dean took to honing knives, cleaning guns, impromptu karaoke, anything to keep his mind occupied. Anything to keep from feeling the heat prickle his skin and fry his brain. Sometimes he’d tease Sam, try to get a reaction from him, but it was often too much work. Their ceaseless meanderings from state to state with nothing even so mundane as a salt-n-burn to break the monotony, coupled with sweat constantly trickling down his face, sticking his back and legs to the seat wore him down. Sixteen years old, and an old man muttering about how hot and tired he was already.

If not for feeling like a piece of salted meat day after day, Dean would have mercilessly taunted Sam. Sam in the backseat, bandana tied around his forehead to staunch the sweat from dripping into his eyes, body newly growing into lithe, skinny lines, and face always, _always_ , in a book. It didn’t seem to matter that the pages would soak in the ambient water, becoming difficult to turn and likely adding pounds of weight to already heavy tomes. Or that the ink occasionally smeared from his slick fingers turning the pages. Sam kept at it, asking Dad to find a post office so he could mail a book back to a library two states and fifteen towns past. Trips to the Salvation Army for fresh - relatively speaking – clothes, often found Sam leaving with nothing more than a handful of new books and a single pair of socks his father had thrust at him in selfish disgust. “At least so your feet don’t stink, Sam.”

Dean wouldn’t have minded, really, that Sam spent the summer reading. It kept him quiet, almost docile. And in the following years amidst slamming doors, shouting matches, and, finally, Sam’s flight away to Stanford, Dean would think he’d imagined that Sam had ever just been along for the ride, happy enough to endure sun blazed days spent criss-crossing crumbling state roads and nights spent coughing in artificially frigid air. Not to mention the food stops at diners so dilapidated, it was a wonder the ceilings didn’t collapse on their heads. No, he wouldn’t have minded at all if the books had actually been _about_ something. Folklore, Latin, myths, witches, hell, even sprites. But Sam read none of that, seemed wholly uninterested in any of it, at all. Sam read books about birds.

 _Audubon's Birds Of America, Field Guides to North American Birds, The Art of Ornithology; Birds of Delaware, of Maryland, of Maine, of Ecuador; The Nature of Penguins, Long-tailed Parakeets, The Domestic Duck; Peterson Field Guide to Advanced Birding, I’d Rather be Birding, The Birdwatcher’s Companion_ ; and on and on until Dean half-feverishly thought Sam was trying to conjure a way to sprout wings.

September came disguised as a brutal thunderstorm to pellet the Impala with hailstones, finally shattering the heat wave. John pulled into the next town, found them shelter of sorts, and enrolled them in school. John took to hustling pool for a while, then was tipped off to an on-going poker game before he eventually had to turn to scamming credit cards. It wasn’t much, never was, but they ate and slept and were still for a while. Dean shuffled through his classes, aiming mostly to stay just until he had to; till he could procure a GED. Sam put down the bird books, started acing algebra tests and scoring winning soccer goals.

Their dad was two days past his promised October return date, and Dean was serving up the last of the tomato soup for dinner. “So, you over your flight of fancy there, Sammy?” Dean grinned, amused by his pun.

Sam blew across a spoonful of soup, swallowed it down. “Yeah.”

“Guess if we’re ever trapped by _Mothra_ or something, you’re gonna be pretty handy, huh?”

Sam swirled his spoon in the soup bowl, shaking his head. “Nah. It was just cool to read those books, you know? Because…”

“Cause why, Sammy?”

“Because,” Sam dropped the spoon, folded his arms on the cracked formica table, sighing, “because all those people, they wrote about them, watched them, drew them. But most of them, they never got it, you know? Never got what those birds had that they didn’t.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Freedom.”

“Whattya talkin’ about? We got freedom.”

“Not like them, Dean.” Sam picked up the spoon, spun it around in the soup, again. “The freedom to just spread your wings and never look back.”


	2. Chapter 2

Dean tries to place a rhythm to the staccato beat the rain is pounding out on the roof of the garage. Soon enough he abandons the effort in favor of closing his eyes, tipping his head upon the car's headrest, and begging the sound to drive away, _for just a moment, a moment that's all he asks,_ the thrumming, electric pain that courses through his veins every moment of every day.

He reins in what he can, trying not to bleed his emptiness over every facet of Lisa and Ben's life. But when it rains, the water falling from the sky feels too much like the world is mocking the endless tears he refuses to cry. That's when he retreats to the refuge of the retired Impala. Here, in the shelter of _home_ and surrounded by memories, he can imagine the rain is the Earth weeping for Sam in a way that Dean cannot.

The moment he does, the rain will cease, and Sam, _Sammy_ , will cease.

So while he begs for a moment's respite from the drag of Sam's dearth in his life, he hopes, _but does not pray_ , that the moment doesn't come.

His eyes fixed on the cloth car ceiling, he catches movement in his peripheral vision.

He's not entirely positive there _was_ movement in his peripheral vision. Still, the years ( _his life_ ) of honing his tracking skills to all visible and invisible movements within his field of sight instinctually tell him: _movement._

Dean straightens up, tensing ill-used muscles. His right hand snakes down to the silver knife housed in an ankle sheath, his left levers open the door handle. There’s movement, there, a shadow briefly blocking the weak backyard light coming in through the garage door window.

With the car door ajar, Dean strains to hear anything over the pouring rain cascading onto the garage's tin roof. He tips his head upward, whispers, "Shh." He catches the shadow dancing once more across the window. It's still an indistinct blur, even with Dean's eyes accustomed to the two hours spent in the unlit garage; _a life spent in the dark_.

He unclenches his muscles, slithers out of the car. He slowly picks his way across the garage until his back is against the wall and beside the door. Dean steadies his breath in an attempt to hear something besides the rat-a-tat-tat rain and the thumping of his heart. This should be easy, this should be like slipping on a hand-sewn leather glove, this slipping into hunter mode. He is unpracticed, though, and his instincts are dulled, marred by months spent trying to temper his grief in the face of Lisa's kindness. Of Ben's easy acceptance of him despite the mornings Dean greets him with bloodshot eyes and a gruff voice.

They acquiesced to him in a way that Dean has been unable to reciprocate. On a night Dean spent in the pitiful embrace of tequila, he'd asked, " _Why_ , Lisa?" She’d answered, "Because." Dean had railed at that, screaming at her, "That's something you tell a kid when you tell them they can't have ice cream for dinner, dammit.“ Lisa scribbled a note, stuffed it in Dean's jean pocket, then left him to wallow in his martyrdom

The following morning, Dean had spent a considerable amount of time praying to the porcelain goddess - _Why aren't you here to tell me what an ass I am, Sam?_ When he could finally stand upright without faceplanting onto the tiled bathroom floor, Dean stripped out of his sweat soaked, puke covered clothes to take a twenty minute shower - five minutes to get clean; fifteen spent berating himself for ever inflicting his pathetic existence on this family; one second to curse Sam for making him promise. One second too long.

It wasn't until he stooped down to corral his clothes into a plastic bag, debating whether he should even attempt to clean them, or if it was better all the way around - and forget about the entire night - to just throw them out, that he spotted the crumpled paper sticking out of a jean pocket.

The note was barely legible, the pencil markings had been nearly rubbed off. Dean held it to the glare of the bathroom vanity light and read, "You ask me why, and I say because. Because you and Sam saved Ben. Because you have saved so many people. Because Sam saved the world. Because you love Sam, and I love Ben, and _I can't save you_. But I can keep you from killing yourself. So when I say because, I mean _because_."

Dean, Sam, their dad, other hunters, none of them had ever stuck around to watch the consequences of their actions play out for those people whose lives they saved ( _altered_ ). It was a miracle if they ever encountered them, again, and if they did, even knew of the changes that had been wrought.

Lisa may always have been this way, she may have been inalienably altered before Dean ever stumbled back into her life that lonesome night after his brothers, possessed as they were by Lucifer and Michael, fell from the world and collapsed a void that took up residence in Dean's soul. Whichever the case may be, she had kept him from swan diving into a bottle of liquid courage every night simply _because_. The one time Dean had talked to a shrink about the whole thing, the guy had brought up the possibility of Dean sporting an Oedipal complex. Dean had left so fast, he was sure there had been a cartoon-like dust cloud in his wake.

Maybe the guy had _something_ , but Dean found examining his life too closely led to either rage-fueled alcohol binges or nights of endless forced jocularity, or both, in an attempt to stave off the reality of his fucked-up life. A fucked-up life that consisted of Sam dead, caught in Lucifer's cage, and him topside feeding off the kindness of others. Dean gave up trying to sort out what he owed Lisa and Ben in return, but kept vigil, ensuring the traps and sigils placed in and around the house were complete. Finding out what exactly was creeping around their lawn in the middle of a midsummer night's rainstorm seemed the _very least_ he could do.

Gripping the door knob tight and the knife tighter, Dean eases the door inward. The drenching rain obscures what little there is to see, but there's _something_ there. A something where there should be nothing; an amorphous darkness interrupting the light spilling from the kitchen window. The right side of the shape is nearly straight, but the left side is a jumble of arcs and lines that seem to resemble a large, tattered wing.

For an instant, lightening cracks a burst of day-bright light through the sky, and Dean nearly falls to his knees. The silver knife clangs to the concrete as it slips from his hand, and he runs through the sloppy swamp the downpour has made of the yard towards the sight before him. It's Castiel, one wing extended and draped around a figure slumped within Castiel's trenchcoat. A figure that can only be Sam.

Dean splashes mud and uprooted grass onto both Castiel and Sam when he stops abruptly in front of them. He reaches a trembling hand towards his brother. Sam, who is barefoot, hair plastered to his face, rain running in rivulets down his body, but whose eyes are focused entirely on Dean. Dean would think the whole scene a grief-induced hallucination if not for the force with which Castiel grips his wrist before Dean can touch Sam.

"It's best not to touch, yet, Dean."

Castiel's voice is a whisper in the rain, but reverberates down Dean's spine. Dean doesn't retract his hand, but neither does he fight against Castiel's grip. Castiel lowers Dean's arm. "The rain is painful enough for him, your touch will likely be far more than he needs, right now."

"Then," Dean nearly chokes on the adrenaline coarsing through him, "then let's get the hell inside." Castiel nods, turning Sam with his wing towards Lisa's home. Sam stumbles at first, but rights himself, and walks beneath the shelter of Castiel's wing, huddled within Castiel's coat. Dean gathers his own wits about himself, then hurries to open the mudroom door ahead of them.

The house is quiet and cool, almost reverently so, compared to the raging, chaotic thunderstorm outside. At the entrance, Castiel stops their progress. He locks his eyes on Dean's. "This is as far as I go. This is as much as I can do." Castiel retracts the protective wing, and slips his coat off of Sam's shoulders. "He chose."

For as much as Sam's sudden reappareance under the shelter of an Angel of the Lord was, to say the least, _shocking_ , it's those spoken words that jolt Dean to his core. Neither of them, neither Sam nor Dean, nor their parents, nor anyone ever in their lives has ever truly had a choice. They've been manipulated, goaded, hoodwinked, and forced into every step along their tortorous path. And that manipulation has led to this moment: to Sam standing ankle-deep in a muddy morass of earth, seemingly resurrected and alive -- free from the grip of hell's dominion of fury, from fiery Lucifer's grip. Castiel cannot have said that Sam chose anything, because that isn't possible, and Dean's had lifetimes for that one fundamental truth to be beaten through his skull and deep into his soul.

"Cas, what the fuck? I don't, just tell me what. What is going on? What _choice_?"

Castiel doesn't answer, merely shrugs his coat back onto his shoulders. Dean's about to grab him by the lapels and shake an answer out of him, when Castiel turns to fully face Sam. Placing his hands on either side of Sam's face, Castiel pitches his voice loudly, "Godspeed to you, Sam."

Dean watches in stunned silence as Sam blinks his eyes, smiles at Castiel, and slips out of the embrace to climb the small staircase into Lisa's house, to Dean. Sam's pupils contract in the fluorescent light. He smiles at Dean, leaves watery footprints in his wake as he seeks out an unlit corner of the room, slumps down to the floor, hugs his legs to his chest, and rests his head upon his knees.

When Dean turns back to ask Castiel what in the holy fuck is going on, he half-expects Castiel to be gone, to have flitted away, again, as he always does. Instead, Castiel stands in the pouring rain, a look of deep sadness etched across his face. "Take care, Dean. Tell him, if, _when_ he,” Castiel’s eyes roam the perimeter of Lisa’s house, “no longer requires the walls, to say the words to let it in.”

Castiel extends his wings to fly away, leaving Dean adrift in the home of a woman he barely knows, with the person he knows best. His brother is curled silently in the corner of a room filled with cast-off shoes, thread-bare clothes, and a humming, incessant fluorescent bulb lighting everything with a clinical glare.

Dean doesn't know whether to cry or puke.

~*~

Dean and Bobby spend fervent weeks attempting to decipher how Sam came back. They re-visit the copious research Sam himself had gathered, had poured through, during those dark months before Dean's deal came due. Then, as now, there's simply nothing.

Bobby, as always a man true to his word, vows to continue the search. Dean hasn't the heart to tell him to forget it; it matters less with each passing month. In those first heady weeks of Sam's return, Dean felt helplessness settle deep within him as he listened to Sam scream when touched; as he counted the long minutes for Sam to recover from a frothing seizure; as he bandaged Sam's left arm where he'd scratched layers of skin off to paint bloody sigils across his bedroom floor.

Together, Dean, Lisa, and Ben learn how to make those days fewer and less frequent. Ben plays video games with headphones crammed into his ears; Lisa huddles in a corner of the bedroom to talk on the phone; Dean learns to speed read the closed captions for football games.

Eventually, Sam drinks protein shakes and merely blinks back tears on sunny days. Dean gives up caring about the hows and whys, about fixating on Castiel's words, when Sam goes two months without scratching off his skin, suffering a seizure, or opening his mouth to expel a guttural, visceral scream.

Dean knows that he could not have done this alone; that as before Sam's return, he is in debt to Lisa and Ben's acquiescence to Dean’s, andSam's, needs. He tries to thank her, to tell Lisa how grateful he is even as the silence presses in, pushes down, cocoons them all into a swaddled low-pitched aural world.

Lisa nods, points to Ben running in the backyard. "Because Sam did that."

~*~

Dean nudges the door to Sam's room open with his boot. A year on, his steel- toed boots no longer clang against the wood. He walks in, toe-heel, toe-heel, to lessen the noise of his steps on the hard-wood floor. He pauses at the foot of Sam's bed. Sam is huddled in his usual spot, back to the bed, legs drawn up to his chest, bare feet and hands pressed firmly to the wood floor beneath him. The blinds are closed tight, the black-out drapes tightly secured against any hint of sunlight.

The protein shake, the only thing Sam will consume even on his good days, sweats in Dean's hand. He tightens his grip to keep it from slipping and slopping its contents across the floor.

Sam pivots his head, turning it until his eyes meet Dean's. For an imagined moment, Dean projects the emotions that used to perpetually flit and crash across Sam's face. Sam's face is constant now. An unchanging blank mask marked only by the muscle movements needed to move his eyes, slurp down the thick shake, or occasionally furrow his brow. More akin to motions necessary to _exist_ rather than to _live,_ for there is little thought or emotion behind the movements.

Dean waits for Sam to blink his eyes, to pivot his head back so his eyes return to some blank spot on the bedroom wall before Dean comes any closer. Dean leans back against the wall, slides down to the floor, mirroring Sam's position across from him.

Placing the perspiring plastic tumbler between them, Dean pitches his voice low and calm, "I brought your dinner, Sammy."

Occasionally, Sam will reach for it immediately, his hand darting out so fast, so quick, it's a blur. Those times, Sam will ignore the straw in favor of ingesting the viscous mixture in a few greedy swallows.

Sometimes, Sam will snake his hand out to clasp the rim. Moments will pass before he slides it across the floor, eventually lifting it to his mouth. Moments more pass before he'll place his lips to the proferred straw and slowly, with the hesitation of a dying man, sip the liquid. Those moments add up to hours. But once the hours pass, Sam has consumed the shake, and Dean knows for one day more at least, Sam won't wither from malnutrition.

Most times, like today, Sam's eyes stay fixed to a spot above Dean's left shoulder; the drink sits neglected as the ingredients separate into distinct layers. Dean learned to forgo begging, cajoling, pleading, bargaining with Sam on these days. He only drove himself into a frenzy trying to drag a reaction, _an action_ , out of Sam. On Dean's worst day, he flung the shake against the far wall while unleashing a primal growl of his own.

He cut his hands in a million little places cleaning the glass shards off the floor. He only brings the drink in a plastic tumbler now. Not for Sam, for himself. For himself so he doesn't rip his hands to ribbons in some macabre parody of Sam's livid, scarred arm.

Dean rubs his wet hand back and forth against his denim clad leg, breathes deep before giving the speech he recited for an hour beforehand.

"So, Sam, I was wondering." Dean mimics Sam as he fixes his eyes over Sam's shoulder. It reeks of cowardice not to look at Sam's face, but Dean knows he won’t see a reaction to his words there, and at a time like this, Dean needs to disengage himself. "Actually, Lisa asked, if, um, if you want to come downstairs. You know, sit with us for dinner. Whaddya think, Sammy? You think you can handle hanging out with us, tonight?" Dean waves his hand towards the bedroom door. "I'll make sure we don't get too loud, okay?"

In his peripheral vision, Dean watches Sam tilt his head.

Dean’s eyes aren't even that far away from Sam, they never have been, so Dean simply slides his gaze over to Sam. He inhales sharply through his nose; Sam's eyes are sparkling with intent and sharply focused on Dean.

"Cuckoo birds tried to take Ben. The cuckoo birds, they're gone. Ben isn't a cuckoo bird, anymore."

Sam's voice is clear, not hoarse from weeks of disuse like Dean expected. Sam's words are gibberish, but they make an odd sort of sense. At last, Sam is engaging Dean, and Dean's heart leaps from his chest, into his hand, ready to be offered _again, again_ to the only person that he has ever truly loved.

It's Dean's voice that is choked and raspy when he replies, "What? Sam, what?" He fears any movement of his own will destroy the moment he has silently pleaded for, for so long.

Sam takes a deep swallow from the tumbler, then grins at Dean. "Cuckoos blew away. In flames. I remember that."

Dean watches rapt as Sam unfolds himself, stands to his full height, and offers a helping hand to Dean. "C'mon," he says. As if it has been Dean this whole time, these past many months that has kept them all in stasis.

Dean returns Sam's infectious smile. "Yeah, Sammy, c'mon."

~*~

The conversation is stilted, not quite awkward, but almost, as Sam sits with his shoulder _touching_ Dean's, his right hand all but fused to Dean's left. Ben begins to recite a tale of soccer victory from his earlier game, his voice rising in volume as his hand gestures wildly aid in telling the tale.

Dean eyes Sam's right hand straying towards his scarred left arm, some of the wounds still pink and raw from weeks of Sam scratching open his skin with jagged fingernails, using the blood to draw indecipherable sigils on the floor, the walls, the door of his bedroom. He reaches out, guides Sam's hand back to the dishwater colored protein shake on the table. Dean says, "Here, Sammy, you're almost done with it."

Lisa casts an apologetic glance towards Dean, softly says, "Ben, inside voice." Ben turns shame-faced, tells Dean, "Sorry, sorry."

The room falls silent except for the scratch of flatware against dinnerware. Sam leans towards Ben, conspiratorially whispers, "I thought I was an albatross, once. Weighing everything down. But I wasn’t. Later, later I found out I was a hummingbird, a precious thing, even if sometimes I was a whippoorwill.”

Dean catches Lisa's worried glance over Sam's hunched form, questions him with her eyes. Dean shakes his head, he has nothing to offer her but his own concerned glance.

"You’re not an albatross, be a whippoorwill, okay? Tell the story, it’s okay. Okay?" Ben turns wide eyes to both Lisa and Dean before looking back to Sam.

"Okay, Sam."

Sam nods his head as if a bet has been settled, then leans back to press his shoulder into Dean's once again.

~*~

Sam doesn't become a chatterbox or a fully active participant in the world after that night, but neither does he revert back to a freakishly good impression of a marble statue nor a babbling, screaming mess. He walks around the house, staying mostly in the shadows. He touches objects with tentative fingers, talks about various migratory patterns of birds, and once, memorably attempts to make a shake on his own. Dean came running to Ben's shouts just in time to find Sam backed into the kitchen pantry as the blender whirled a mess of milk and bananas across the room.

After Dean pried Sam off the wall and into the next room, he said, "Look, just ask next time, okay Sammy?"

Sam stared into the kitchen for so long, Dean began to fear all Sam's progress had been undone by a KMart Blue Light Special blender, and wouldn't that just be par for the fucking course. Several more quiet beats passed between them, then Sam shook his head. "If we had a macaw, it would have learned that sound."

"Not sure what the hell that means, Sam, but let's go get the banana outta your hair, okay? Sound like a plan?"

Sam dutifully headed towards the bathroom, his hand trailing along the wall, repeating, "Macaw, macaw, macaw."

~*~

Two evenings later, Sam sits next to Dean, his left ear pressed against the hard wood table top Dean’s laptop is resting on. Dean’s researching a local case that caught his attention in the newspaper, a vague blurb about a family thought missing, lost in the local wilderness. Turns out they were found wondering a trail and told the police they'd been caught off-guard by a hungry bear, barely escaping with their lives. Their pictured pallor and vivid description certainly matched a story of being waylaid by a wayward bear, but Dean couldn't shake his hunter instincts that there was _something_ so much more there.

"You have so much more time than your love of danger. Don't be a stranger to the life you have."

Sam's voice is soft as he speaks, but when Dean glances at him, he can see the firm set of Sam's mouth and the fiery intensity in his eyes. Looking Dean directly in the eye, Sam clutches Dean's hand, determination giving his words an edge, "Let it go, let someone else seize it." Before Dean can respond, before he can even begin to make sense of the words, Sam releases Dean's hand, and idly traces patterns on the wood.

When Lisa speaks, it startles Dean from his reverie. "He puts his head down next to the laptop a lot. I think the sound of the fan calms him."

~*~

Ten days later, Dean is mummifying Sam's left arm in sterile bandages.

Off Lisa's observation, Dean bought Sam one of those new-agey white noise machines. But when he'd turned it on, set it next to Sam, and hoped the “evening wind” setting — whatever the fuck that was – would mimic the whir of the laptop fan, Sam pulverized the thing. Between Sam's shouts of _Dead!_ and _Lies!_ , Dean managed to wrestle a plastic shard ( _so sharp_ ) from Sam before he ruptured an artery with the goddamn thing.

Later, when Sam was caressing a wall in his bedroom, Dean’s curiosity gnaws at him. He asks, “Sam, what’s dead?”

Sam rubs his hand first clockwise, then counterclockwise, then clockwise, then back in a seemingly endless circle on the wall. Dean finds himself mesmerized by the motion. His eyes lose focus, crossed, spellbound in the repetitive movement.

When Sam responds, his voice is steely. “The plastic, it has no life. It’s mockery, mock, a mockingbird singing a song it shouldn’t. Lying about what it owns. Acting like it belonged in the tree, in the forest.” Sam’s hand slows, comes to rest at the apex of his imaginary circle. He cuts his eyes towards Dean, chokes out, “Chirping over the other songs.”

“All right, Sam, all right.” Dean doesn’t have a clue what his brother is talking about, but it seems to satisfy Sam who nods, drops his hand from the wall and smiles.

~*~

Ben's soccer season comes to an end. Ben had grown especially close to one of his teammates, Billy. Lisa and Ben, Billy and his parents all plan to attend the awards ceremony.

Dean tells Sam hesitantly, "I think I might go too, Sam."

Sam looks up from his cross-legged position on the floor. He wears the same infectious grin he'd sported the night he compared Ben to a cuckoo bird. "You should go."

"Yeah, it's just that…" Dean pauses, running a hand through his military-short hair, "it's just that it's that same family. You know, with the bear?"

"You're not going to quote the raven." Sam's steely voice matches the hard lines of his face. All trace of his previous whimsy is gone. "Don't seize it. Let the raven go."

Despite listening, _he tried so hard_ , for months to Sam's ramblings about birds and their perceived relationship to everything from blenders to knotted wood, Dean feels, as always, like he’s failing.

Dean crouchs at eye-level with Sam. "Look, I really don't know what the hell you're talking about, Sam. Can ya help me out here a bit?"

Sam shakes his head, repeating, "Don't seize it. Let the raven go."

Latching on to the part that makes a vague sort of sense and combining it with a life spent deciphering Sam, Dean clasps Sam's hand. "I'm guessing I need to promise to just smile and nod, then come home with Lisa and Ben?"

When Sam nods vigorously in response, Dean feels a small victory shoot through him, pulling his heart back to his chest.

~*~

Dean keeps his promise, tangentially. He'd come back to Lisa's house with her and Ben after the awards ceremony. Ben, and the rest of his team received a ribbon, a trophy, some trinket or other. Dean hadn't promised, specifically, that he wouldn’t bring Billy and his parents back home.

The family seemed normal enough, at least by the standards Dean measured the world. Which meant Mark and Susan Falls had no beetle-black eyes, no obvious claws, and didn’t flinch when Dean muttered _Christo_. Whatever Sam had been referring to when he'd told Dean not to seize anything made even less sense when Billy's dad spent an hour droning on about the wonders of organic meat. _That_ was an hour of Dean's life he was _never_ getting back.

Several vain attempts to steer Mark towards recounting the grizzly bear tale later, Dean began to suspect there was nothing more to the story, or this guy, then met the eye. A weird occurrence, to be sure, but one with which Dean was at least passingly familiar. Mark and Susan seemed downright _normal_.

As they approach the threshold of Lisa's house, Mark and Susan, even Billy-- who was excitedly discussing XBox scores with Ben – slow down. The three come to a halt at the base of the steps leading to the front door.

Dean's spine tingles as he stares at the waiting family, part curious, part impatient, and part…something else. Mark, Susan, and Billy stare back. Lisa breaks the short stalemate, chuckling, “Well, I’ve got some ice cream that’s about to go bad, and that would be a shame, right boys? So everyone c’mon in.”

The whole situation actually feels downright _normal_ to Dean. And that says a lot, considering his sojourn to Hell, not to mention Sam’s own all-expenses paid trip to the Big Below. He pushes the tingle away, pushes it down into the same hole he pushes all his fears.

Besides, Dean bargains with himself, Lisa and Ben had agreed to give him and Sam shelter. The least he could do was let them have company once in a while. It would be nice to have visitors in the house who hadn't had their souls flayed inside out for a change

~*~

Dean leans across the kitchen island, listens as Lisa and the Falls make small talk. The tingle is still there, something he can’t quite shake. He tells himself it’s nothing. There’s nothing to Mark and Susan standing behind the kitchen table, both gripping chair seatbacks with white knuckles. Nothing to Billy suddenly clamming up when Ben is still blabbing away. Their expressions still pass for normal, but they stand too rigid, eyes a little too wide. The tingle grows stronger. There’s a buzzing in Dean’s ears.

Ben is the first to notice. His eyes flick to the hallway that connects the kitchen to the stairway. Dean follows Ben's glance; it settles on Sam.

Sam is dressed as he always is: barefoot, jeans, a long-sleeved t-shirt. But everything else is wrong. His left hand presses firmly against the wall, nails scraping off the paint in jagged stripes. His right hand twitches, alternatively flexing and clenching. His stance is wide, all of his weight balanced on the balls of his feet. If Dean didn't immediately recognize it for a hunter preparing for battle, then surely Sam's hunched shoulders, grim, thinly-set mouth, and blazing eyes would broadcast an impending attack.

Lisa notices next, and tension falls across the group as Mark and Susan go silent. When Sam speaks, his words pierce the heavy silence like a knife.

"Cardinals sing when their nests are threatened. They sing a lot because they build their nests too close to the ground, too easy they make their young, prey." He glares at the Falls.

"There is no prey, here,” he says slowly. “So I wonder, _why_ do I hear cardinal song?"

Dean edges towards Sam, hand outstretched as he whispers his brother’s name.

Sam takes a step, re-settles his stance. His voice is a hammer, "How are you here and why do I hear cardinal song?!"

In a display of agility and speed Dean thought long-lost to Sam, Sam lunges at Billy. He grabs the boy’s arm and shoves him hard against the kitchen table.

"You are a cuckoo. Not yet, not yet."

While everyone else stands in shocked immobility, Dean grabs hold of Sam's shoulders.

"Sam, let go, man, he's just a kid." What the hell is Sam _doing_?

Sam shakes Dean off with a roll of his back and hauls Billy upright again. He yells, "Cuckoo bird, never to be a mockingbird, will you. But it is too late, cannot un-ring that bell!"

Dean gathers himself, pulls Billy away from a heaving, wild-eyed Sam.

Sam calls out, "Hold him, Dean, do not release the almost mockingbird."

Dean holds the boy tight, his mind spinning; he wonders desperately: _What did I miss? What did I miss!?_

Ben runs to his mother, as Sam ducks the punch Mark telegraphs from a mile away. Sam spins on his toes, snatches a chair, smashes it against the floor.

Sam growls, "Lisa, Ben, fly away to my room." He wields one of the shattered chair legs like a club, raises it menacingly at both Mark and Susan. The couple looks apoplectic with fear. Dean doesn’t blame them. Sam roars, "I know who you are. You cannot hide from me, never more." He advances towards them until their backs are pressed against the picture window. "The question I cannot answer," Sam continues loudly, "is _why_ do I hear cardinal song?"

Dean turns to Lisa, who is clearly terrified, her arms around Ben in a protective hug. "Do what Sam says," he grits out, passing Billy over to her. "Take Billy, too, go, _go now._ Run!" Whatever the fuck has snapped in Sam's head, the fewer civilians in the way, the better. The fewer loved ones in the midst of Sam's rage, the better chance Dean has to save them all.

Latching onto both the boys, Lisa pivots on her heel towards the hallway. Dean bends to grab his knife from its ankle sheath, best for him to take Sam down before any blood is spilled.

Suddenly Sam cries out, "No," driving the chair leg deep into Mark's heart, simultaneously encircling Susan's neck with his other hand.

 _Too late_ , thinks Dean, _too late_.

But the blood that should be pumping from Mark's chest like a flash-flood, _isn’t there._ And Susan isn’t choking and fighting for breath; she’s fighting to free herself without once inhaling. Dean stares in stunned stupefaction. He may not be a doctor, but he knows breathing is pretty fucking important. His instincts might have been worn down over the past two years, but Dean's hunter mind is never at rest. Finally, the pieces slot into place.

Dean leaps after Lisa, catching Billy's hand. "Leave him here, Lisa."  
Lisa stops, shock lacing her words, "Dean, what?"

"They're vampires,." Dean tells her. He nods towards Billy. "Him, too."

Billy pulls free of Dean's grasp, throws Dean to the floor.

"Your fucked up friend is right, I'm not, _yet_." Billy snarls.

Dean watches in horror as Billy yanks Ben from Lisa. The vamp kid bares his fangs, ready to bite Ben’s neck.

In the midst of Lisa's scream, Dean snatches his knife off the floor and plunges it into Billy's back. Ben drops to the floor, and crawls toward his mother. She pulls him close, sobbing in relief. Dean brings the knife down repeatedly, not thinking about the fact the vampire wears a boy’s face. He knows stabbing the vampire won’t kill it, but he had to stop Billy from killing Ben. What else was he supposed to do? He had to sever three vampire necks, keep Sam from going completely batshit on the rest of them, and protect the two people Dean owes his life – and remaining sanity – to .

It’s a tall order, but one that Dean’s trained for his whole life. Still, a _Jesus Christ_ was worth muttering a few dozen times.

"You okay over there, Sammy?"

"Dean, I need --"

Dean can hear Mark and Susan hissing as they re-double their efforts against Sam.

Puncturing Billy like a stuffed pig slows the kid down, but for how long? Dean can’t risk leaving the kid at Ben and Lisa's feet with all that bloodlust fueling him.

His brief indecision is knocked on its ass when Lisa frantically whispers: "Butcher knife."

She scrambles up, Ben in tow, and heads straight for the knife block on the kitchen counter. Pulling out the butcher knife, she slides it across the marble countertop and yells, "Sam, nine o'clock sharp!"

Sam reaches out as the hilt slides into his hand. One hand is still around Susan’s throat and he slams her to the ground. Releasing her neck, Sam sings out, "Bye-bye, mockingbird!" In one smooth motion lops off her head.

Dragging Billy by his collar towards Sam, Dean yells, "Sam, behind you."

Sam blindly reaches back, wraps his hand around the impromptu wooden stake still sticking from Mark's chest, and slams him down beside his headless wife. "Never more, never more," Sam calls out before severing Mark's head off, as well.

Sam's heavy breathing is in concert with the drum of Dean's racing heart. Sam’s on his knees beside the corpses, the butcher knife still in his hand. The vampires’ (stolen) blood seeps onto the tile, puddling around him.

Billy, slowed by numerous stab wounds, howls in rage at the sight. "You bastards, I'll kill you all!"

"Lisa, go, get Ben out of here," Dean commands. Though at this point, everything is shot pretty much to hell. It’s too late now, Lisa and Ben have both seen horrors Dean can’t erase.

"No."

Dean looks at her increduously. "What the hell do you mean, 'no'? I don't think you know what the hell I've got left to do."

Lisa walks around the kitchen island that separates her and Ben from the carnage across the kitchen.

"I know _exactly_ what you have left to do. I just watched Sam do it. _Ben_ just watched Sam do it. This isn't the first time we've seen this shit go down, Dean, and _apparently_ , it won't be the last. So before that _thing_ starts gnawing on anyone's throat around here, kill the bastard, or _I will_."

Sam laughs softly, "Blackbird sings at night."

"Damn right," Lisa nods, "but I'd really prefer if someone more experienced did it. I don't want to screw it up, and make, I don't know, a zombie vampire or something."

"Oh for fuck's sake," Dean grunts. Snatching the knife from Sam's loose grip, Dean hauls a struggling Billy over to where the other bodies lay, and cuts off his head.

"Well, then," Lisa sighs, "I'll get the bleach."

~*~


	3. Chapter 3

Hunting, Dean thinks, is primarily a ditch digging job. One of his first hunting memories was listening to his dad explain the most efficient way to move dirt. He'd been assigned the job of look-out while his dad lectured him on the best way to swing a shovel through various kinds of earth: loamy soil scraped off with the back of the shovel; clay broken into chunks before scooping it out; sand powered through quickly before it had a chance to re-settle and double the time required.

Predictably, Lisa's backyard consisted of all three types in varying depths. Dean dug crisply through the layers struggling to not appear frantic. He'd decided one deep hole for all three bodies would probably raise less suspicion than three fresh graves. It was the same amount of work, regardless, to his aching back. Daylight was fast approaching, orange streaks broke through the twilight gray sky as Dean heard the tell-tale flutter of Castiel's wings.

"Dean. I need to talk to Sam."

Dean didn’t even bother looking at Castiel while he shoveled. He stood in a six-foot deep hole, throwing shovel-full after shovel-full of sand up and onto the grass. God, sand was a bitch.

"I'm fine, thanks for asking. Coulda used your help coupla hours ago. Hell, coulda used your help six fucking months ago when Sam was slicing his arm open for the umpteenth fucking time, but," Dean grunts as he slams the shovel point down into the make-shift grave, "sure, let me just scramble on out of here and do your bidding, Cas. That sound about right?"

Castiel eyes Dean placidly before reaching down and effortlessly hoisting him up to ground-level. "I am here to help. I need to talk to Sam about what happened last night."

Dean snorts, "You're two hours late and a couple hundred dollars short." Dean bends over to roll the headless, bloodless bodies of the vampires into the deep hole, soccer kicking all three heads in on top. Sam wasn’t the only one who could make a goal.

"Unless you're gonna levitate all this dirt back in, Cas, I gotta do it myself. So if you don't mind." Dean brushes past Castiel to start the back-breaking work of refilling the hole.

"Step away, Dean."

"What?"

"I said," Castiel repeats, " _step away_."

Dean backs up a step, and watches in amazement as Castiel replaces the dirt it had taken Dean hours to remove with a flick of his hand. Another flick, and grass sprouts from the disturbed earth. . "It's done. Now, I need to talk with Sam."

"Yeah, well," Dean waves towards Lisa's house, "he was inside babbling something about blackbirds or ravens or something when I left, probably still is."

Castiel peers over his shoulder at the house, his eyes scanning the perimeter. "Dean, there's a reason I met you outside that night with Sam, and a reason I cannot go in to talk with him. I need you," Castiel turns back to Dean, his eyes blazing, "to go inside and ask him to come talk to me, here."

Something tickles the edges of Dean's mind; an inkling of what Castiel meant about not being able to enter Lisa’s house on his own. But Dean is exhausted, and, honestly, can’t muster the energy to give a rat's ass about Castiel’s problems. Not after the fucking awful night he'd had, and the terrible year of watching Sam crawl back to this world. And never mind the year before _that_ Dean had spent practically crawling into a bottle to avoid reality.

"Fine, Cas," Dean sighs, dragging himself to the mudroom door.

"Dean," Castiel calls after him, "remind him he chose."

Without pausing, Dean waves a hand backwards, muttering, "Yeah, yeah, he chose."

~*~

When Dean enters the kitchen, Lisa is mopping up the watery, bleached remains of blood on the floor. Ben’s watching her with – to Dean's eye – far more rapt fascination that any kid really ought to be.

Ben catches Dean staring at him and frowns. "This is taking fucking _forever_."

Lisa looks up, says sharply, "Ben."

"Sorry, it's taking _effing_ forever," Ben sighs. "And I should at least get to stay home, today. It'd be kinda weird to go to school after," Ben gestures around, "all _this_. Besides, someone is gonna ask where Billy is. And what am I gonna say? 'Yeah, I was about to have some ice cream with him, turned out he was a vampire, and I watched his head get sliced off?’ Probably not gonna go over real well with the principal."

With a clatter, Lisa throws the mop to the floor. "Dean, you finished out there?"

"Yeah, I, uh," Dean feels there is some role he should be playing, here. He'd taken on the role of uncleto Ben, and ally with Lisa. But just like the rest of his life, there wasn't a rule book for this. Being an uncle and ally wasn’t the same as _father_ and _husband_. He didn’t feel like he had any real say in the off-kilter domestic drama playing out in front of him.

He opted for clearing his throat to repeat, "Yeah, I'm done out there. Got kind of an assist from Cas."

"That’s cool. Can I talk to him?" Ben asks.

"No, Ben," Dean grits, "it isn’t. And the last thing anyone would say about Cas is 'cool'." It's disturbing how easily the kid is just taking everything in stride. And despite Lisa's declaration to the contrary last night, her pinched, face radiates concern and disgust at Ben’s question. "And he doesn't want to talk to you, _and_ ,” Dean steels his voice further, "I don't want you talking to him."

Glancing back at Lisa, Dean asks, "Sam still upstairs? He okay? You okay?"

Off Lisa's nod and gesture toward the ceiling, Dean takes the stairs two at a time. After Sam's outburst and the surprise beheadings last night, Dean is pretty sure his heavy footsteps register on Sam's scale of _do not want_ anymore. Still, he opens his brother’s door carefully. No sense spooking Sam. Dean _really_ isn’t in the mood to listen to more blather about bird song.

Rounding the foot of Sam's bed, Dean is relieved to find Sam in his familiar back-to-the-bed, knees-to-his-chest position. For a moment, Dean simply watches Sam. He tries to envision a life without hunting, without rampant death and destruction chasing them or left in their wake. A life without hell or heaven, nothing but a house with a basketball hoop on some quiet suburban block. Once, Sam had called that kind of life safe. But that had been blown to shit with Jess' death, Brady's betrayal, and the knowledge that a thousand years of familial manipulation ended with Sam's birth to a seemingly safe, suburban couple. No, Dean muses, true safety means salted doorways and window sills. It means a handy silver knife and eyes in the back of your head. Along with a heaping dose of suspicion, mistrust, and wariness of all things demonic and angelic.

"I heard the mourning dove."

Sam's quiet, clear voice rouses Dean from his pointless thoughts.

Dean drags his hand across his face, then mutters, "Pretty sure you mean Cas, Sam. And, yeah, he says he's gotta talk to you."

Sam rubs his hands in a circular pattern on the floorboards, flexs his toes before replying, "Cause I chose, cause I chose."

Sam’s words echo what Castiel said the night he brought Sam back, and what he’d said minutes ago out in the yard. Dean’s head aches. Since when had Sam had the chance to choose anything? John Winchester taught his sons about a lot of topics over the years, but choice was never one of them. Last night's invasion emphasized Dean couldn't even allow freaking Mr. and Mrs. Bland USA into the house without everything going to shit. _Of course_ the Blandy McBlands were fucking vampires. The only reason they even got inside the house was because Dean, hunter extraordinaire, allowed them to be invited in. Christ, how could he have been so stupid? He’d love to spend another hour or thousand berating himself, but this isn’t the time. Dean pushes that particular train of thought off the rails and concentrates on Sam.

"Yeah, he, uh, he told me to remind you of that, but seems – “

"I know," Sam interrupts. "Cas may hear many things, but I know that I chose, and I heard the mourning dove coo before he knew to."

"Okay, before this gets anymore, you know, weirder and all, how about you just go talk to him?"

Sam levers himself upright by pushing his elbows onto the mattress behind him. He nods at Dean and stalks toward the door. Dean catches Sam’s hand as he passes.

"This doesn't mean that you and I don't need to talk, either."

Sam’s gaze drifts toward Dean as he whispers, "You were always meant for a cold season and for leaving. I'm sorry, but it’s not time for either."

Dean feels like he’s free-falling, again, _again_. He jerks Sam’s arm, turns his head to look directly into Sam’s eyes. "Dammit, Sam. I know whatever is cooking up there," Dean points to Sam's head, "is on some kind of slow simmer, but I can't keep talking in riddles with you. And I sure as shit can't have a riddle conversation with you that involves, I don't know, canaries, after what you did last night while Castiel loiters in the backyard. Both of you keep mumbling some kind of choice you made and Lisa is mopping up devil's blood from her freaking kitchen floor. And Ben?" Dean takes a deep breath, continues in a quieter tone, "Ben thinks this is cool. You got me? You hear me," Dean presses a hand to Sam's head, "in here?"

Sam leans his head against Dean's hand. "You win a prize for that."

"Jesus Christ, Sam, just go."

~*~

Dean gives Lisa and Ben a concerned glance as he walks through the kitchen with Sam. They’re both eating grilled cheese sandwiches at the kitchen island, and Dean cringes inwardly when Ben flashes a thumbs up.

Sam pauses at the door. He turns back to Ben. "Your song was loudest of all," he says, before continuing outside.

Castiel is standing where Dean left him, beside the newly grown grass his eyes cast skyward.

They’re still a few steps away when, Sam places a halting arm across Dean's chest. "You can't hear that?"

Dean listens, straining for any unusual sounds. An early morning breeze rustles the leaves, a lone dog barks, a distant car's engine turns over. All muted in the dawn hour; all so stereotypical it borders on cliche.

"Just you, Sam."

Sam wraps his arm fully across Dean, commands: "Stay."

Dean stays, rooted to a spot several feet from Castiel. He watches warily as Sam approaches the angel. Sam's stride is sure and true, so unlike the night Castiel had to guide a stumbling Sam toward Lisa's mudroom, toward Dean.

Their words are low, their backs to Dean he struggles to hear what they’re saying. It looks like Cas speaks more than Sam, but that’s just guesswork on Dean’s part. It’s hard to tell since Sam stands like a statue throughout the whole conversation. At least Cas shakes his head a few times, nods, once he even looks heavenward. But mostly he just looks at Sam.

The early autumn sun has fully cleared the horizon when Lisa comes to stand beside Dean.

Dean opens his mouth to say _sorry, thank you, I'm so sorry_ , but Lisa waves his prepared apology off.

Ben's sleeping. He was right, it would be too weird to send him to school, today. I just came to see how you were."

And once more, Dean feels nearly overwhelmed by the weight of her kindness. Whatever the outcome of Sam's mind-melding with Castiel, Dean’s going to treat Lisa better. She deserves more than a pathetic drunk leaching off her.

Dean murmurs, "Sam was wrong, it is a cold season for leaving." Lisa's open-handed slap across his face wasn't quite the response he'd been expecting.

"You think you can just pack up and leave? You don't just drop in our lives, you both don't just drop into our lives and say, 'By the way, saved the world, can we hang for a while,' slaughter three vampires in my home, and then pack yourselves back into that car headed off for God knows where.”

"Oh, no, Dean,” Lisa continues, “that's not how it works. We're a part of this, now, whether you care or not. Because I do. I care about what happens to you, what happens to Sam. What happens to my son. I care about what goes bump in the night, and innocents turned to blood-thirsty killers, literally."

"Lisa, I can't ask you --"

"You're not asking me anything, Dean. You never did. When are you gonna get that? I'm telling you, you two _aren’t_ taking off. You’re staying until he’s,” Lisa points to Sam, “at a point where he can eat, you know, _actual food_ , and you,” she continues, pressing her finger into his chest, “and I figure what the hell is going on. Not the least because I don't think I can ever eat meat in my kitchen, again. But because all of this," Lisa sweeps her hand around, "matters. And you, Dean, you fucking matter because you saved us last night, and you saved us before, and you just can't help saving people. And your brother, for as exasperating as he is, and Lord knows if I hear one more litany of Latin names for migratory birds I just might snap, he's worth it, too. He saved us last night, too.”

Lisa slams her fist into Dean's chest before finishing, "So we’ll figure this out together. Got it?"

Softly Dean says, "Because."

"Damn right, because."

~*~

The noon-day sun blazes overhead. Dean and Lisa retreat to the stained concrete steps leading into the house, waiting out Sam and Castiel’s talk. Dean finds himself nodding off, alternatively resting his head against the door and Lisa's shoulder. At first, inchoate dreams flash through his mind, but none of the images stay long enough to form a full picture.

Flashes of bloody hunts gone by, patchwork conversations he'd had with Sam over the years, his father's gruff voice and his mother's sweet perfume. A collage of a life lived piecemeal floated in and out of his mind's eye.

He dreams of honking geese on a southerly migration, influenced, he supposes, by Sam's idle talk of such things.

He dreams of the night Sam returned. Of Castiel's trenchcoat draped across Sam's shoulders, of Castiel's insistence then, as now, that he couldn’t enter the house. Then, briefly, of how easily the vampires violated the sanctity of their shared home, how all of Dean's protective work and planted charms were undone by the simple, neighborly act of inviting them in. He'd let them cross the threshold because they'd seemed normal, safe. And that stood in stark contrast to everything he'd been taught, of how he lived his entirelife.

The dream changes shape, re-forms into Sam's bloody handiwork marking his bedroom, shiny red sigils lustrous even in the darkened room. And Sam at the center of it all, crouched on the floor with his hands pressed firmly to the hard wood.

The day Sam smashed the white noise machine as he screamed of dead things flashes through Dean’s mind, unwanted and reckless. Sam’s screams are quickly replaced by images of Sam trailing his hands along the walls, his bare feet slowly, softly padding through the house.

Throughout his dream, Dean hears Castiel repeat, _He chose_ in sync with Sam's uttering of the same phrase.

 _He chose, I chose, I chose, Dean_.

"Dean, I chose."

Dean jerks awake at Sam's voice. The words are no longer part of a dream, they’re from Sam himself. Sam crouches in front of him, one strong hand on Dean's shoulder.

Dean looks for Castiel, but he's gone. Without so much as a word. When Dean returns his gaze to Sam, he sees the familiar, child-like infectious grin on his brother’s face.

"C'mon, Dean, let's go inside."

Sam’s hand is still on Dean’s shoulder, and he guides Dean and Lisa back into the house.

~*~

That evening, and well into the night, Sam stands at the picture window in the kitchen. One hand is pressed firmly to the glass, the other opens and closes reflexively. He moves it from the window sill to his side, and back again, restless.

 

He ignores Dean’s pleas to tell him what he and Castiel discussed. He ignores Dean’s attempts to drag him away, to sit down, to eat. Eventually, Dean drags a chair over and sits next to Sam. It’s possible this is a momentary event, that Sam will shake his head, grin down at Dean, and they’ll at least be back to where they started a day ago. That’s all Dean hopes for now; he’s abandoned any pretense of hope for what they once were, years, _years_ ago.

The air still stinks of bleach and the coppery tang of blood. Lisa and Ben take their meal in the living room, quietly but determinedly ignoring the brothers. The night grows deeper, a half-moon rises, shedding pale light across the lawn, over Sam’s face. And still Sam does not move.

Dean waits.

Sam’s gentle hand comes to rest on Dean’s shoulder, and finally, Dean succumbs to sleep.

~*~

A scraping sound jolts Dean awake. It’s Ben drawing a chair over to sit next to him. Ben nods to him, and Dean wonders if he’s supposed to say something. There are no words in his head, his vocal chords feel rusty.

Lisa steps into the kitchen, leans against the counter top. “Guess there’s no time like the present.” Off Dean’s questioning glance, she continues, “We should start figuring this all out.”

Dean doesn’t have the strength. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, presses so hard he sees multi-colored stars.

When he drops his hands, the stars linger, dotting the space orbiting Lisa’s head. Her face shows how little sleep she had the previous night. How little sleep she’s had over the past months — years — since Dean came back into her. Yet as his vision returns, he glimpses something besides weariness on her face: strength. He can see it in her stance, in the way she didn’t lie or try to placate him she said they’d figure this out together. She hadn’t just scribbled those words on a piece of paper to calm an irrational drunk. She _believes_ in him, in their makeshift family. They’re indelibly tied together now, Lisa, Ben, and Dean in this found kinship.

He’s often regretted the weight he laid on them by honoring Sam’s last request. But, here, in this moment, it strikes him that she and Ben are as reliant on him for kindness and care and protection as he and Sam. The thought bolsters him. Maybe _this_ is what Sam was looking for all those years ago, what Sam had gifted to him: the consistency of human compassion that radiates out, remains when everything else is gone, comforts when nothing else can.

“Guess I should start with finding something to revoke the vampire’s welcome mat,” Dean says with a crooked smile.

Ben’s eyes light up, “Can I help?”

“Ben,” Lisa sighs, “I’m pretty sure you’re gonna need to know something like Latin or Greek to do that. How about you let Dean handle that. You and me,” she looks towards Sam’s rigid back, “could try and get Sam to eat something.”

Dean nods, offers Lisa a small smile.

Ben opens his mouth to protest, when Sam’s grip tightens on Dean’s shoulder, and he gasps. Whirling around, Sam looks first to Lisa, then to Ben.

“No time, no time for Cardinal song, the Peregrine is coming.” Sam snatches Lisa and Ben’s hands, begins hauling them down the hallway toward the stairs. Stunned by Sam’s sudden action after the previous night’s calm , it takes Dean a moment to process what’s happening.

Dean runs after them. He calls to Sam, “What the fuck, man?” He grabs Sam’s shoulder, tries to stop his determined flight with Lisa and Ben.

Sam pulls free of Dean’s grasp. He doesn’t stop until he’s at the first step. “The Peregrine is _coming_ , Dean. Now. Upstairs, upstairs, we gotta go.”

“Sam --,” Dean starts, but it’s Lisa that finishes his thought.

“--you promise me, Sam,” Lisa squeezes Sam’s hand. “You promise me that Ben will be safe. That if we follow you, Ben will be safe.”

Sam turns the full force of his gaze on Lisa. “I promise,” he states solemnly.

Hunting, by its nature, is an instinticual process. Time spent practicing, learning, training muscles so the very fibers retain the memory of how to fire a gun, evade a blow, attack when needed without neurons firing between brain and sinew can save your life. Time spent reading, researching, and memorizing knowledge so you know how to react the instant you see a creature is imperative. Time spent coordinating muscle-memory and thought-memory sways the odds of survival in the hunter’s favor, keeps him alive, the last one. Though each hunt is a series of semi-predictable events based on a pencil-sketched outline of all that’s gone before, a lifetime spent seeking mind-body synchronicity alters the survival odds from improbable to likely.

Sam and Dean have both passed the point of no return, both in terms of training and hunting, and with what they’ve seen. What they’ve ( _barely_ ) lived through. They’ve experienced enough shit for ten lifetimes.

Despite Sam’s cryptic words wrapped in stupid bird metaphors, Dean _knows_ Sam’s promise is true. He can and will keep Ben safe.

Dean places a hand on Lisa’s back, tells her, “Go, let’s go.”

Sam eyes flash quickly in brief thanks to Dean before he turns on his heel, and starts back up the stairs.

~*~

Sam crashes into his bedroom, Lisa and Ben in tow, Dean at their heels. Sam digs into his pocket, pulls out a small terra cotta jar.

“Just gotta do this first.”

Sam jams a finger into the jar. It comes out covered in blood, one fat droplet drips on to the floor.

“Sam, what—“ Dean gasps, because holy shit, Sam has a _jar of blood_.

“No, no,” Sam says quickly, “It’s not mine, no. Castiel.”

“Castiel. Gave you blood?”

“Yes, not his, not his. I told him, told him that I, I – “ Sam stutters, pauses to look at his scarred arm, then to Dean. “I told him that I drew the scarecrows, already. But falcons, they don’t mind them.” Sam drags his bloody finger across one wall. He repeats the gruesome process of dipping and drawing until a ragged, irregular line crosses all four walls. He makes quick work of it, stopping at the doorway.

Bloody finger held aloft, Sam sits Lisa and Ben on the floor next to his bed, in the same spot he’d occupied for months on end.

“Sit, sit. No shoes, no socks, take them off, feet on the floor, okay?” Sam instructs them as he ties back the drapes and pulls open the blinds on the window. Turning back to them, Sam raps on the glass pane. “Eyes here, yeah?” _Tap, tap, tap_. “Always look out here. See the sky, the houses, the street. Look at the trees, the leaves, watch cars go by. This is where you look, keeping looking here.”

Dean trusts Sam, he _has to._ If even a fraction of Sam’s crazy-ass actions and desperate pleas help keep the promise he just made – a promise Dean believes in — Dean will do whatever Sam asks. He’s known Sam for a lifetime, and regardless of the past year, Dean trusts Sam with his life. With Ben’s life. With Lisa’s.

Dean trusts Sam. End of story.

Dean grips the footboard, urges Ben and Lisa to trust the wild-haired man tapping on a window with a finger dripping blood he got from a freaking _angel_. The man who has saved them once already, despite having been through Hell and back —l iterally. The man who covered his room in protective designs drawn with his own blood. The man who spent endless hours fingering countless all manner of tchotckes while humming bird songs. This is the man who promised to keep them safe. Who _will_ keep them safe.

“Lisa,” Dean says, “please, just do it.”

She flicks her gaze from Sam to Dean, then nods. She unties her shoes, tells Ben, “Take ‘em off, Ben. Bare feet on the floor.”

Sam kneels before them, bends their knees up to their chests, puts their hands on the floorboards next to their feet. It’s a perfect copy of the position Sam held for so long.

“Feel the wood, it’s quiet. Look, there.” Sam points to the window behind him. “Keep your eyes on the prize. If you feel the wood come alive, hold on, don’t let go. If you feel it die, put on your shoes. You shouldn’t, you shouldn’t, though. But if you do, do what I say. And never, never look away. Okay, yes?”

Lisa looks like she’s swallowing bile. Ben stares wide-eyed, but nods his head. “Got it, Sam,” he whispers.

Sam exhales deeply, clasps their hands. He says softly, “When geese migrate, they fly in a V formation. It’s tiring for the lead, so after a while, it fades back and back and back until it trails at the end. While it rests, others take the lead, and then they, too, fall back and back untilthe first bird is in the lead again. The whole time, they honk to each other. For encouragement, for help, to make sure the bird that was in the lead is still there, with them at the end.”

“You’re at the end, now, but still a part of it all. If you need us, you honk, Lisa. You call out. But I promise you, this, “ Sam taps the wooden floor, “and that,” Sam again points to the window, “will keep you safe and a part of us.”

Sam dips his finger back into the jar, draws a red line around Lisa and Ben, onto the bed and back to the floor. Sam dips his fingers into the jar again, resumes the protective artwork around Lisa and Ben. He looks at Lisa “Your blackbird song, it’s strong,” he says, a smile in his voice. “Just not as loud as geese. Believe, remember, geese calls.” Sam inspects the rough loop of blood around Lisa and Ben. He wipes his hand on his jeans, leaves a faint red streak behind.

Lisa whispers, “I believe you.”

Sam’s body relaxes slightly at Lisa’s words. He quickly stands, in two steps, he’s at Dean’s side.

He whispers urgently: “Time to call the mourning dove.” Sam replaces the jar lid, strides for the door. Dean spares a final glance at Lisa and Ben, both resolutely staring through the window in front of them. Then he turns to leave with Sam.

Once in the hallway, Sam quietly closes the door, reverently running his hand along the wood grain.

“Now will you tell me just what the fuck is going on, Sam?”

Sam doesn’t respond at first. Instead, he opens the jar again, dips in a finger, and draws a circle upon the door.

Sam drops his hand, and then says, “The Peregrine is coming, and it’s time to call the dove.” He takes off running down the hallway, and bounds down the stairs.

Dean suddenly feels small and defenseless for the first time in his life.

~*~

When Dean reaches Sam, he finds him standing stock still in the living room. One arm is pointed toward the picture window. Dean turns to look. Outside, the thatch of ground Dean buried the vampires in swells and bulges.

“So not good.”

Sam closes his eyes. His voice is a low growl, “Ex abundantia enim cordis os loquitur.Requiem en pace haud magis. Esto quod es. Et lux in tenebris lucet. Esse est percipi; esto quod es.”

Dean never devoted much time or energy to Latin. He knows the basic pronunciations for exorcism and cleansing rituals, but Sam had always been the better student. Dean excelled in badassery, and determination to see a job through to the end, usually with Sam’s lilting Latin chants as atmospheric background. The hollow pull of vunerability that began to gnaw at him upstairs grows worse. He is frustrated by the epic weirdness before him, at his inability to understand the real meaning behind Sam’s birdspeak

 

A muttered, _dammit_ , and Dean bends to retrieve the silver knife from it’s ankle sheath. The handle is worn from use, familiar in his hand. He clutches it like an anchor in an oncoming storm.

It’s all he has.

Everything else, the tools of his trade that had served his dad, himself, and Sam for so long and so well, are stored away, out of reach. They’re far across the back lawn, useless now, locked beneath the Impala’s false-bottom trunk.

Sam opens his eyes, calmly repeats the Latin words like a mantra. The walls of the house began to bow inwards as if pulled on their center line. The wood floor rises and falls like a wave, causing them to brace against each other for support. The windows liquefy, the glass sliding downwards from the panes holding them in place. What was once glass pools to the floor.

Despite the wreckage, the only sound is Sam’s voice.

With one final shouted _esto quod es_ , Sam stops. The house comes to rest in disarray, the furniture upended, photograph frames lie broken on the uneven floor. The silence pushes into Dean, fills his ears with blankness, as if he’s gone deaf.

“Sam.” Dean grabs Sam by the arm. He’s not even sure Sam heard him, if he _can_ hear him. “Sam, what did you do?”

Sam points at the gaping ruins of the room’s picture window, and whispers, “Castiel.”

Dean looks outside, stunned, and watches as Castiel alights next to the roiling grave. “Sam, what --”

Between an eyelid’s blink, Castiel stands before them. Scarcely glancing at Dean, Castiel clasps his hands on each side of Sam’s face, just like he’d done the night he brought Sam back.

“There isn’t much time. I can’t stop it.”

“No, I chose, Castiel. Have to fly through it.”

“Will someone for fuck’s sake, tell me what is going on?” Dean demands.

“There isn’t time, Dean. Let go of your brother.”

“The fuck I will. The goddamn house just _dissolved_ and you two are talking in secret code, and I’m left standing here with my fucking dick in my hands. So, no, I will not let go until one of you gives me an answer. What did Sam just do, and what are you about to?”

Castiel lifts his hand and knocks Dean right on his ass, glowering, “There is no time, Dean.”

Dean knows it’s futile, but he struggles to get up anyway. He trusted Sam, Sam _promised_ that Lisa and Ben would be safe. But here they are, Sam apparently bending space with words, a penetrating silence so deep it aches, and Castiel throwing him to the floor like some piece of shit toy. Meanwhile, there’s a timer ticking down to zero when what--? A goddamn bird is going to show up?

He knows it’s futile, but he struggles _because_ of that.

Castiel and Sam ignore Dean. Sam hands the jar of blood to Castiel, who promptly drops his hands from Sam’s face. Instead, he places two fingers on Sam’s forehead.

“Memento totus.”

A shockwave of sound rushes through the room as Sam throws his head back and screams and screams and _screams_.

Horrified, Dean helplessly watches Sam collapse like dead weight to the floor, his body crumpled like a rag doll. The oppressive silence returns, Dean’s shouted, _”No!_ ” makes no sound. He turns furious eyes to Castiel who is looking at Sam with an infuriating mixture of fascination and pity. Dean attempts to move again and finds the invisible bonds holding him in place have dissolved.

Dean pushes himself to his hands and knees and crawls over the ruined floor to Sam’s still form. Pressing his fingers to Sam’s neck, Dean finds his brother’s pulse strong and steady. Dean pulls himself upright and grabs Castiel by his dirty, threadworn trenchcoat lapels.

“What the fuck?” he yells.

The words are gone before they’re even out of Dean’s mouth. Goddamn silence _._ Castiel lets himself be shaken several times before he pushes Dean against the far wall. The angel places one hand over Dean’s mouth and lifts an index finger to his own lips.

Dean fights the urge to punch Castiel. It’s fucking asinine to ask for silence when that’s all there is.  
Dean shakes his head, knocking Castiel’s hand from his face, and mouths, _Lisa and Ben?_

Castiel glances in the direction of Sam’s room, then mouths _,_ _Safe._

Dean mouths, _Sam?_

Castiel pauses, then mouths, _Yes_.

Dean bites back a silent retort of _What does that mean?_ when Castiel picks up the small terra cotta jar. He calmly dips his hand in the blood and smoothly, calmly draws a semi-circle on the floor around them. He continues the circle up along the wall, over Dean’s head, and back down to the floor in a wide arc. It’s the same odd, crude oval Sam drew around Ben and Lisa. Like Sam before him, Castiel keeps the sigil simple, without embellishment. The angel nods in satisfaction before slipping the jar into some secret coat pocket. Dean casts him a questioning look.

Castiel breathes deeply, calmly, and says, “Dove’s blood.”

Dean huffs a sigh of relief that he can hear Castiel inside the makeshift circle.

Castiel continues his explanation. “Dean, I asked you once which you desired: peace or freedom.”

Dean remembers. He remembers his hands gripping the steering wheel hard enough to hurt as the Impala spirited him through the night towards Lisa and Ben, and away from Sam and Adam locked away inside Lucifer’s. Leaving Sam behind had left a hole in Dean as deep and dark as the one Lucifer’s cage was buried in. As the remnants of Dean’s soul fractured and spun in a thousand directions Castiel disappeared before Dean could take a breath, much less contemplate what the question meant. He’d pushed Castiel’s question away, buried with ( _Sam)_ all the other memories that were too painful to remember. He hadn’t thought of it since, either. He’d been too consumed with grief, both for himself, and Sam. Grief for all that could have been, but wasn’t. Would never be. Their futures had been planned out years ago, maybe even centuries, long before either of them -- or their parents -- were even born. What did the question matter? It wasn’t something Dean could ever choose.

“You remember,” Castiel continues, ignoring Dean’s eyeroll .“The same question was posed to Sam. This,” Castiel waves a hand around, “is the result.”

Dean blinks. At last, the pieces fall into place. “So which is this, Peace or Freedom?”

If Dean didn’t know better, he’d think Castiel actually looks rueful. “Freedom.”

“So, what. You fly into Hell, into Satan’s prison, waltz up to Sam and say, ‘Peace or Freedom?’ Sam chooses Freedom, and wham, bam, thank you ma’am, Lucifer just lets him leave?”

“No.” Castiel blinks slowly before continuing, “A discarded angel is _still_ an angel.”

Dean’s exhausted, but fresh adrenaline propels him closer to Castiel. The pain and fear he’s locked away for so long is boiling over and he has no place to put it. He clenches his fists, desperate to lash out, to break something, anything. The weight of his life, Sam’s choice, _everything,_ is too much, he can’t breathe. And then the final puzzle piece clicks into place and Dean feels like he really is suffocating.

“Lucifer. Lucifer gave him the choice, and _set him free_?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t even know what the fuck to do with that.”

Silence falls between them.

One minute, two, and then three pass as the silence stretches, surrounds them, the room, the world.

Sound rushes back with a sudden splintering of wood. The mud room door explodes. Dean wants to scream, to hear his own rage ( _fear_ ), but Castiel silences him with a warning look. The angel points to the shattered remains of the splintered door. A man steps gingerly in and around the broken wood. As he comes into view, Dean recognizes a man who should be very dead: Mark Falls.

Tightening his grip around the hilt of his knife, Dean pushes off the wall, ready to lunge at the _un_ -undead bastard before he reaches Sam’s prone body. Castiel’s hand closes around Dean’s arm in an iron grip; he shakes his head vehemently, mouths, _No, wait._ Dean’s about to tell him to go fuck himself when Castiel slams him back to the wall, hissing, “Wait.”

Dean has never wanted to shank an angel so badly in his life as he does right now. But he’s powerless, relatively unarmed, and -- he hates to admit it -- vulnerable. Dean still doesn’t know what’s going on, hasn’t known for years, hell, probably his entire life. And the one being who could help him, _has_ helped him in the past, is causing this.

All he can do is wait and watch. Watch as a demon spawn with a freshly reattached head strides over to Sam, kicks his ass with a grubby, dirt-encrusted penny loafer for fuck’s sake, and taunts, “Wakey, wakey, Sammy baby.”

This shouldn’t be happening. This _can’t_ be happening.

Sam doesn’t stir, much to Mark’s apparent disgust. He kicks Sam a second time, harder, and bends forward, close to Sam’s ear. “Wakey, wakey, Sammy baby!” he shouts.

This time, Sam’s whole body jerks. He opens his eyes, blinks up at Mark. Or what used to be Mark. The demon steps back as Sam hoists himself upright using an overturned chair for leverage. It’s a kitchen chair, tossed into the living room during Sam’s Latin recitation and its aftermath.

Mark studies the chair ruefully and remarks, “You know, I bet it really fucking hurt when you jammed that chair leg,” he gestures to himself, “into this chest.”

Sam coughs, shakes his head to clear the hair from his face. “It was supposed to.”

“Oh, tough words from a guy who sings along with birds and clings to his brother like he’s four years old again.”

“You know,” Sam says slowly, “my memory is a bit foggy, but I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to be able to take an unconsenting body.”

Dean only has a moment to realize Sam’s in complete sentences before Mark tilts his head to the side and extends wings. A _ngel’s wings_. Holy shit.

“All these years, all that time spent in Lucifer’s cage, and you’re still surprised at what angels can do. So sad. Thought you’d be teacher’s pet, sitting at Lucifer’s right hand. You know what they say, Sammy baby, once you go _Satan_ , there’s no going back.”

Mark folds his wings, begins to circle Sam. “So tell me, why are you here, topside, roaming around with all the other humans, like you belong.” Mark leans into Sam, very nearly brushing his lips against Sam’s face. “Like you’re allowed?”

Dean watches Sam struggle to refuse the bait.

Sam deliberately turns his head to face Mark dead on, and smiles. “I asked you first.”

Mark snorts. “ _That’s_ what you’ve got for me? ‘I asked you first’? Gotta say, I’m so very unimpressed with you. Thought you were smarter than that idiot brother of yours.” Mark’s eyes roam around the room, seeking Dean out. “Hangs out with dirty, disheveled Castiel, doesn’t he?”

Understanding sparks through Dean: Mark the un-undead vampire cum _angel_ , can neither hear nor see Dean. He and Castiel are secluded voyeurs to the scene before them. Castiel seems to sense the moment of Dean’s realization because leans over and mouths, _Noah’s Dove Blood_. His words are as incoherent to Dean as Sam’s ramblings about geese migration habits, yet Castiel appears to believe that these three words will explain everything.

Dean shakes his head, returns an inaudible, _No_.

“I know much about heaven and hell, and all there is betwixt and between.” Mark slides a thumb down Sam’s jaw to his lips, pushing Sam’s smile down and down. “I know of Lucifer’s cage and all the pretty, pretty _things_ he keeps in there, Sammy baby.”

Sam’s voice rings out, “Tell me, _angel_ , how would you know that?” A devious grin lights Sam’s face clear to his eyes. He laughs. “You know _nothing_ , Raphael.”

A low-pitched, rumbling laugh sandpapers Dean’s skin, burrows deep in his bones. The terrifying, booming laugh comes from Sam and his dimpled smile. Dean shivers. He would gladly take those first few months of Sam’s endless screaming for the rest of his cursed life, if it meant he never had to hear that _laugh_ from Sam again.

“I know you belong in that pit, Samuel. I know you belong among the detritus and carnage of broken bone and twisted sinew. I know you belong amongst screams of agony and despair.”

Raphael’s voice is thunder. Dean fights not to cower under the force of it; Sam stands strong and true, immune to fear. He stares straight at Raphael.

“You belong in a place of unrelenting pain and fear and loathing. It’s _what you deserve_. For what you did, for the abomination you are, will always be. You do not belong on Earth, you do not deserve my Father’s creation. And you do not deserve,” Raphael pauses, and when he speaks again, it’s in a whisper thick with venom, “nor should you know of your brother’s love. Because you destroyed mine, and you are _nothing_.”

Sam inhales deeply through his nose, takes a step closer to Raphael. His voice rings out, “I know.”

The words cut Dean’s heart. He wants to scream out, _No_ , but Castiel restrains him once more.

“Listen,” Castiel says softly.

Sam reaches out, places one hand on the rotting, clay-covered, dead body Raphael wears. “I know what you don’t, because I learned at Lucifer’s hand. You see, Hell _is_ all those things. But Lucifer’s cage is not.”

“His _punishment_ , my _punishment_ ,” Sam continues, “was not to suffer through agony. It was to know _none_.”

Raphael bares his teeth in a mockery of a smile. “You lie.”

“Lucifer’s cage is a place of light and contentment.” Sam’s voice takes on an almost wistful quality. “There is no fear, no pain; there is no terror or dread. But all around it there is. Misery and butchery press against its walls. Inside, inside is _nothing. That_ ,” Sam spits out, “is your Father’s penalty for an angel who dares to question: an eternity of heaven wrapped in bile and blood and horror.”

Sam risks a glance toward Dean and Castiel. His eyes are bloodshot, bright with unshed tears. But when he speaks, his voice is clear and calm, his words betray none of his hidden sorrow, “Look around you. _This_ is hell for me. Fear of things that go bump in the night. Fear that my brother will die, again.” Sam breathes deeply, closes his eyes. His voice waivers, “Sunlight that threatens to blind me. Wood that pricks me with splinters, and food that tastes of ash. Sounds that rip my eardrums and roll through my head like thunder. And everything I touch reminds me of where I am not. The pain of this place, this world, is almost more than I can bear.”

Sam opens his eyes, raises his voice, practically screams, “But I do bear it, because _I_ made a choice. Between the Peace of Satan’s Pit and the Freedom of Earth, I chose Freedom. So back off, angel, _you know nothing_.”

Dean slumps to the broken floor at Sam’s words. Sam sacrificed himself. And his _punishment_ is a reward. He doesn’t want to hear anymore.

All those months Dean assumed that Sam was hiding away from the world because of the horrors he’d seen below, because of the damage inflicted upon him. Sam hadn’t flinched from Dean’s touch because of some remembered pain, but because the true agony was around him _now._ He’s been forced to suffer through the sounds, sights, tastes, smells of this world, when he’d been at peace, free from pain, for probably the first time in his life. Sam had been at peace and he’d _still_ chosen to return to Dean.

Dean wants to blame Lucifer. Lucifer is cruel, exacting, a being of infinite debasement. Yet in his defeat, he’d offered Sam more than God or Karma or Heaven or _whoever_ ever had. He’d offered Sam the chance to decide his own future. Whether Sam knew the full consequences of that choice, why the fuck Lucifer even offered it is beside the point as far as Dean is concerned. Everything he’s done has been stupid and pointless, and still is. Dean sits impotently at the feet of one angel, while another taunts his brother.

Castiel bends low and places a foot atop the bloody circle enclosing them. He puts a hand on Dean’s cheek and gently turns his head. “Wait, listen.”

It’s Raphael’s turn to laugh. He emits a guttural rumble through his teeth. He grabs Sam’s arms, still laughing, and says, “You lie! Lies from Lucifer’s right hand man.”

“The greatest gift God bestowed upon humans, _his favorites_ , was Free Will. The chance to choose, every day, to be or do or act or say whatever we desire. You,” Sam’s hand slides up to grasp Raphael’s borrowed arms, “must ask permission. No one would grant it in time for you, so you parade in here, in the reanimated body of a vampire, desperate to force me to _allow you_ to return me to Hell, to _undo_ my choice.”

Sam abruptly drops his hands, steps out of Raphael’s grip. He raises his voice to finish. “And I _know_. I know where your manipulation, your desperation to grind me down and force me to bend my will to yours comes from.”

“You love your brother, Michael. Here’s the thing, angel,” Sam says, shifting his gaze toward Dean, “I love mine, too. And there isn’t anything, _anything_ , in this world, below or above, that I wouldn’t do for mine.”

“So you can pretend to _ask_ all you want. I will not trade my soul for Michael’s. Look what I’ve already done for mine.”

Raphael extends his wings once more. They shimmer and glow in the fading daylight streaming through the gaping walls. He screws his face into a terrible parody of righteousness. “You dare compare my love for my brother to yours? You condemn an angel to suffer? You will regret that, _human_.” Raphael lunges at Sam.

Sam doesn’t move. He simply calls out, “Noah’s Dove _returns_.”

Castiel wipes his foot across the haphazard bloody circle, breaking its protection. He leaps out, landing at Sam’s shoulder. Raphael seems indifferent to Castiel’s presence; he’s intent on choking the life out of Sam.

Castiel places his sword in Sam’s hand and says, “You cannot make that choice, Raphael.”

Sam thrusts the sword into Raphael’s side.

The wounded angel immediately releases Sam and presses both hands to his injured side. He gasps and splutters, staggering backwards stumbling over the uneven floor and shattered glass. Sam stalks after him, the sword held tight in his hand.

Dean expects his brother him to kill Raphael. And a human killing an Angel of God — no matter how big an asswipe the angel is — has got to be high up on God’s list of don’ts. . Dean rolls to his knees, flings himself outside the circle of blood, yells out, “Sam, _no_!”

Raphael has fallen. He lies broken in a disjointed mess of bent wings, leaking grace from his wounded side. Dean contemplates hauling him inside the safety of the bloody oval. But Sam is already upon Raphael, sitting astride the weakened angel. Sam looks up and meets Dean’s eyes. He smiles. It’s the familiar boyish, deeply-dimpled grin of Sam’s youth. Dean can’t remember the last time he saw that smile. It’s been dampened by years of damage from a lifetime of hunting and killing. It’s been erased by the realization that Sam was never more than a tool used in an attempt to screw over the world at the hands of angels, demons, and humans. Humans like Dean who unknowingly asked more of Sam than he ever should have agreed to. If being on Earth with Dean is Sam’s Hell, then Dean does not want him. It’s too much, the anguish of knowing he failed Sam _again_.

But if Sam kills Raphael wearing that smile, Dean knows Sam will use up any lingering good will he has with God or Lucifer, whoever the fuck counts these days. If Sam kills Raphael, he’ll truly be damned. Damned the way Dean was, on the rack and at the mercy of endless suffering. Sam won’t just be surrounded by suffering, he will _become it_. Dean cannot fail Sam again.

Dean forces himself to return his brother’s smile and says, “Sam, no.”

“Freedom, Dean,” Sam replies. Gripping Castiel’s sword, Sam raises both hands above his head, then violently plunge it into one of Raphael’s wings, pinning it to the floor beneath. Sam bends forward and gently, delicately, plucks a feather from the trapped wing. He holds it triumphantly out to Dean and repeats, “Freedom.”

Castiel winds his way over to Sam and Raphael. He lays a hand atop Raphael’s wound. “Come, brother, let me bring you home.”

Raphael shudders. “How can you allow this? That’s your brother trapped down there, too.”

Castiel simply places two fingers against Raphael’s forehead and a blinding light engulfs the room.

Dean blinks away the aftereffects to see Sam still astride the now empty body of Mark Falls. Raphael and Castiel are gone. They’ve left Sam clutching an angel’s feather, Dean holding a silver knife, and a world of shock between them.

~*~


	4. Chapter 4

The summer Sam was twelve, an arid heat wave rolled across the country. Most of the country was seared dry and desolate during those months. Monsters, demons, beings who craved human blood or carnage were as rare as the prayed for rain.

The Impala served as a torturous oven. It multiplied the humidity within as the sun blazed through untempered glass. Heat radiated up through the leather seats. The open windows were a desperate attempt to create a cross-breeze to evaporate the sweat from their salt-streaked bodies. It only served to increase the furnace blast of heat fruitlessly flowing from one stifling hot corner to the next.

John barely spoke that summer. It was as if the effort to speak sapped too much energy. Dean struggled to occupy his thoughts with mindless tasks and memorization tests. Anything, no matter how brief, was better than thinking about the constant need for water that strummed through his veins.

Sam seemed impervious to it all. True, he pleaded for an extra day in the chilled air of run-down motel rooms as often as Dean. But once he was tucked back into the Impala’s back seat, he fell silent, lost in a world of written birds.

One weekend, John splurged for three days in the motel. An entire weekend spent at a motel on the outskirts of a former steel town afforded them uninterrupted hours of cool respite from the blinding heat waiting outside. John slept, Dean flipped through skin mags, and Sam read about owls, blue jays, macaws, and swallows.

“Sam,” Dean asked the second night, “What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?” Sixteen year old Dean smiled smugly, sure Sam would be flummoxed by the question.

“African or European?” Sam retorted without ever lifting his eyes from his book.

“Either.”

“Twenty-four miles an hour.”

“And a laden swallow?”

Sam lazily flipped the page of the dog-eared Audubon book in front of him. “A five ounce bird can’t carry a one pound coconut, _Dean_.”

Dean threw a pillow at him. “You’re such a little shit, Sammy.”

“I know. Anyway, shut up, you love me.”

Smiling, Dean nodded. It was true. It would always be true. “ _You_ shut up.”

That night, Dean sat on the cool concrete of the breezeway outside their room. Funny how he almost missed the oppressive heat after forty-eight inside a refrigerated room. _Just a taste_ , he told himself, so he could appreciate the cool air in the room behind him.

A gust of wind sent a myriad of plastic bags, cigarette butts, and food wrappers skittering past Dean. A feather drifted amongst the detritus, catching on one of the Impala’s tires. Dean snagged it out of the tire well, twirled it between his fingers. It was frayed, several barbs missing and bent. It smelled decidedly of motor oil, as if it had spent the day in a pool of it beneath another, long-gone car. He couldn’t tell if had been multi-colored once, or if had always been black, regardless of the motor oil. But it was small enough to fit into his pocket, so Dean stuffed it inside. He’d give it to Sam in the morning.

Morning came with John sounding reveille early. He spoke gruffly, choked out a brief, “Gotta get moving,” to wake Dean and Sam. They dressed as quickly as they shoveled breakfast into their mouths, and were on the road with the rising sun. Another monotonous day stretched before them. The rescued feather sat newly forgotten in Dean’s back pocket.

Weeks later, when Dean asked Sam about his summer spent reading all things avian, and Sam had spoken of freedom, he remembered the discarded, oily feather. Digging through various pairs of jeans in search of it, Dean figured it had simply given up the ghost, disintegrated from wear and tear and a hundred washes. But there, in the back pocket of his favorite jeans, was the feather.

There was enough left that Dean could still twirl it between his fingers. He dropped it in Sam’s lap, saying, “Found this. Thought you might like it.”

Sam scrunched his face at it before carefully inspecting the feather. It was tattered and cracked, but still held its own. Looking up at Dean, Sam flashed him a lop-sided smile.

“I do. Thanks, Dean.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

Dean plopped onto the couch next to Sam. He channel surfed for something besides the _Hee-Haw_ reruns the local station seemed to play every night. Sam returned to his homework, and John came back a week late past his promised return.

The morning after Sam flew away to Stanford, Dean found an envelope on his pillow. When Dean unfolded Sam’s note, the feather was inside, taped next to the words, _I’ll always look back_.

Dean burned them both.

~*~

“Sam?”

Sam legs sprawl over the empty corpse of Raphael, of the vampire, of dead Mark Falls. There’s a sickening thud as the head drops back off the body. Sam’s no longer smiling. He twirls the angel feather gently. Sam offers the feather to Dean.

“To remember, so we never have to look back.” Then he promptly passes out, sliding to the floor in a heap.

Dean wobbles on his knees, lurches forward onto his hands. It’s an unsteady position, his right hand higher than his left, his left knee lower than his right, as he crawls across upended floorboards.

He takes a few deep breathes, tries to will his nausea away. It doesn’t go. Instead, he vomits watery bile. Dry heaves rack his body. Adrenaline drains away, replaced by the ache of tense and exhausted muscles. Moments pass, and his body gives in. Dean rolls onto his back, narrowly avoiding the puddle of his own sick, There are cracks in the ceiling. He follows one across until his eyes roll back in his head. The stench of death and blood and vomit and sweat fill his nose. Three decades spent here, twice that long spent below, and he’s still not used to the smell. His stomach clenches, but there’s nothing left to expel.

He wonders if it would be best for him, for Sam, for the whole miserable line of Winchesters if he simply closed his eyes and let go. Castiel, surely, can wipe his memory from Sam’s mind. Leave Sam’s mind blank, let him spend his life sharing bird facts with anyone willing to listen. It seems less cruel than leaving Sam’s mind the chaotic painful place it is now, thanks to Dean.

 _C’mon, get up, got things to do_. John’s voice echoes through Dean’s head, and so he does. He pushes himself up, crawls over to Sam. Sam is still unconscious, lying partially across Mark Falls’ dead body, Dean pushes and pulls Sam off the corpse. He runs a hand across Sam’s warm face, down to the pulse point on his neck, feels the steady _thump-thump_ of life beneath his fingertips.

“Cas?” Dean calls. The question is more of a reflex than an actual desire to talk to the angel. After three years, it’s a hard habit to break; he doesn’t really expect an answer. Castiel spent the last awful year ignoring Dean’s pleas for help, there’s no reason he should change his ways now.

“Think you’ll be okay for a minute, Sammy?” Sam still holds the dark feather. It flutters in the breeze blowing in through the empty windows. “Yeah, I think you’ll be all right for a minute.”

With a sigh, Dean hoists himself upright, shuts his eyes against a brief bout of vertigo. Carefully, he picks his way through the wreckage to the stairs. The steps are twisted and gnarled, spiraling first to the left, then to the right. By the time he reaches the landing, he’s breathless. He’d call himself out of shape if it weren’t for the fresh anxiety driving him forward. The hallway leading to Sam’s bedroom, the place Sam promised Lisa and Ben would be safe, looks just as distorted and fractured as the rooms below.

Dean hurries down the hall to the bedroom door. The frame is bent and bowed, but the door is straight and solid. Dean grabs the doorknob and pulls. The door opens smoothly, despite the ruined hallway; the interior of the room is undamaged. Dean stares. There are no blown out panes of glass littering broken floor boards, no bowed walls that crack the ceiling.

And Lisa and Ben are right where Dean left them. Their backs to the bed, bare feet and hands pressed to the floor, eyes staring determinedly through the intact window to the world outside. They’re alive and safe; Sam kept his promise.

“Dean?” Lisa asks. “That you?”

“Yeah,” he whispers in return, “it’s me.”

Dean walks over, stands in front of them. Neither avert their eyes from the window, even though Dean is blocking their view. “It’s okay, you can stop looking, now.”

Ben blinks, first. He raises his eyes to Dean, keeps his gaze on Dean’s face as he squats to their eye level. Lisa holds out a moment longer, and then another, and one more before she takes a trembling breath and looks at Dean.

“Sam?”

Dean nods. “Fine. Passed out, but,” Dean exhales, “fine.”

Lisa nods too, wraps a shaking arm around Ben. “Okay, then. Okay.”

~*~

The three of them stand in the crumbled remains of the house. Lisa holds Ben close, Dean stands next to Sam. Dean was sure Lisa would have said something about the state of the house by now. But she’d merely pursed her lips into a straight line and held Ben tighter. Even Ben’s awed, “ _Damn_ ,” had earned no rebuke. Whatever her current thoughts might be, she keeps them under wraps. It’s possible Lisa simply has nothing to say in the face of her destroyed home, the dead vampire spread-eagled on the floor, or the sight of Sam unconscious and clutching a feather. Dean certainly has no words. His throat is tight and he can’t catch his breath. He is utterly exhausted.

But still he pushes on.

Dean scrounges up a pillow and blanket for Sam, moves his brother into the most comfortable looking position possible. Sam’s heartbeat and breathing are still strong. Except for the dried blood on Sam’s hand and pants leg, it looks like he simply decided to curl up on the floor to take a midday nap.

Dean gingerly knocks Mark’s head into a garbage bag, ties it off, and begins dragging his body by the feet across the floor. It’s slow going and laborious, but keeps his mind occupied and off Sam, angels, the state of Lisa’s house, and a thousand, million directions his thoughts try to skitter off to. By the time he reaches the shattered mudroom doorway, his mind is no longer racing, but his heart is. It’s just from the exertion. _Not because he now knows Sam is living in _hell_._

Dean grunts as he pulls Mark’s body down the steps, and finally, Lisa reacts. She gives Ben a gentle push toward Dean.

“Go, help him,” she says.

Ben does so without question or pause. Together, the two of them haul Mark’s body back to his grave.

Dean collapses at the edge of the hole he’d dug, that Raphael had crawled out of in a borrowed, decomposing long-gone human body. He sits cross-legged, staring at the shovel he left in the grass. Ben stands awkwardly next to him, periodically glancing around the yard. Dean can’t tell if he’s checking out the damage to the house or simply serving as a look-out. Eventually, Ben sits down beside him and plucks at a blade of grass.

Above them, a flock of southerly migrating geese flap their wings lazily, honking.

The last, brittle threads of strength forcing Dean to put one foot in front of the other, despite loss and grief, hell and betrayal finally break. He puts his head in his hands and cries.

~*~

The stars have long replaced the sun when Dean wakes. He’s curled on his side, cocooned inside a wool blanket; Lisa or Ben had taken a moment to cover him before trying to find peace themselves in the tattered remains of their house. It is quiet, but not supernaturally so. This is the muted quiet of night, when people retire to their houses and animals go quiet. He expects to find himself alone, but hunter’s instinct tells him he’s not. There’s someone nearby.

Chancing a glimpse, Dean cracks one eyelid. Castiel stands before him. Dean opens his mouth to grit out, _Go away_ , but his voice gives out somewhere around the _A._ He closes his eyes, again. He feels a strange sense of movement, and then, nothing.   
~*~

Dean blinks awake to brilliant sunlight. His muscles are so sore he’s sure they’ll cramp the minute he moves. Slowly he catalogues his surroundings: lying on a bed, dust motes floating in fresh air. The scent of death is gone. There’s a figure before him. Lisa sits ramrod straight in a wingback chair, her hands tucked beneath her legs. He chokes back a hysterical laugh at the thought he’s a child again and his long-gone mother replaced by some bizarre facsimile of a stern Harriet Nelson.

Aloud, he asks, “Sam?”

“Awake. Sitting outside in the Impala.”

The answer startles him. Dean moves to sit up, and the world spins. He lowers his head between his knees to stave off the nausea.

“I’m glad you’re awake, Dean.” Then acidly, she adds: “I’m fine. Ben, too, thanks.”

“Good, good, that’s --” Dean reaches blindly for her, exhaling, “that’s good.”

“Yeah, okay.” Lisa takes his hand, helps him to his feet. She guides him down the hallway, down the stairs, through the house, across the yard, towards Sam and the Impala. _Always_.

~*~

The garage is well-lit. Far more so than the night Dean sat here ( _just a year ago_ ), desperate for respite from his all- consuming grief. Now Sam sits in the passenger seat, waiting. The car door is open, his legs sprawled out onto the garage floor. In his hand, the angel plucked feather twirls between his fingers. Dean breaks free of Lisa’s support, hurries to Sam’s side. Leaning against the car, he knocks Sam’s gigantic feet.

“Hey, you okay?”

Before he even looks up, Sam grins. “Yeah, yeah.”

“He woke before you did, insisted on coming out here.”

Castiel’s voice rumbles against the aluminum walls and concrete floor. Dean hadn’t even noticed his presence.

 _Chose_ not to acknowledge it.

Dean turns to Lisa. He needs to ask her, but he has no idea where to start.

Lisa glances from Castiel to Dean. She, finally, Dean realizes, looks him square in the eyes for the first time that day. Dean knows what she’s going to say before she opens her mouth.

“Yeah. Listen, I know what I said before. But I can’t.” Her voice cracks and she visibly pulls herself together before continuing. “I can’t figure this out with you. Not anymore. You boys --” she flutters her hands around the garage, “-- figure this out. I’m, _we’re,_ done.”

“Lisa –“

“No, it’s not. It’s not because of what happened.” A brittle laugh. “It is, actually.” She crosses her arms, hugging them to her chest. “It’s _because_. My debt, it’s paid, Dean. You –“

“No, Lisa, you didn’t have any debt –“

“Stop. Just shut up. I did. To you, to Sam, for Ben, for that out there.” she lifts her chin, indicating the world beyond the garage walls. “I didn’t mind, it wasn’t a burden. But whatever debt you two have yet to pay, I can’t be a part of it. It’s not mine to repay. Or make right. Or wrong. I’m out, I’m all paid up.”

“Lisa –“

Sam grabs his leg, gives a tight shake of his head.

“Just, um, just say good-bye before.” Lisa pulls herself taller, offers Dean a sad smile, juts out her chin before continuing, “You come say good-bye before you leave, got it?”

She spins on her heel and leaves before Dean has a chance to reply.

Dean backs away from Sam’s grip, leans against the work bench. He glances at Sam, then Castiel. Neither of them look guilty for the secrets they’ve kept for the past year. There’s no hint of anything at all on their faces. That’s to be expected from Castiel. But not Sam. Not Sam who bitch-faced his way through Dean’s entire life. Sam whose _lack_ of emotion as he sat in a darkened room communing with wood for fuck’s sake had torn Dean’s heart to shreds. Sam whose vicious decapitation of vampires and violent rebuke of Raphael had scared him shitless. And that’s not even counting the whole feather stealing weirdness. But now Sam’s face is placid, calm, like he doesn’t have a care in the world. It’s like he doesn’t have a thought in his head, which seems pretty fucking convenient. Dean calls bullshit.

He explodes at them both. “What the _fuck_?” Dean. “What the fuck was all _that_ about? And I don’t just mean the last two days. I mean the whole fucking enchilada, you assholes.”

Dean’s anger rises up, boils over. He stalks from one end of the garage to the other.

“You.” He points at Castiel, “You show up one night with Sam out of his _mind_ , and babble on about how he made some choice.” Dean rounds on Sam. “Then you babble about fucking birds or whatever,” he yells, furious, “and _break Lisa’s house with your voice._ You tell an angel to go fuck itself, and oh by the way, didn’t I tell you I actually had it pretty _good_ down there with Lucifer, thanks for asking,. And let’s not forget you stole one of Raphael’s goddamn feathers, passed the fuck out, and left me to pick up the pieces.”

Dean pauses, out of breath. One of them better say something pretty fucking fast or he’s going to continue the verbal beat down. He’s got _plenty_ left to say. Castiel and Sam exchange a look, but that’s it. Okay, fine.

Dean shoves everything off the workbench. Tools, nails, screws cascade to the floor in a clattering heap. For one long moment, the only sound is the reverberating echo of metal on concrete.

“One of you, for the love of --,” Dean catches himself. “For fuck’s sake, one of you needs to start talking. Now.”

It’s Castiel who speaks first. “I didn’t ignore, you, Dean. I heard you every time you asked for help. But I couldn’t. I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen.”

“Well that makes perfect sense, Cas. You sure as shit didn’t have any problem showing up last night.”

“He couldn’t enter the house before, Dean,” Sam interrupts. “The house was warded against angels. Warded against --” A mirthless laugh punches out of him, “pretty much everything. Nothing in or out. Until -- ”

Dean grips the workbench, his knuckles white with the force of it. “Until I let those bloodsuckers in?”

“Yeah. But.”

Sam extricates himself from the Impala, walks to Dean. He’s still got the damned feather clutched in one fist. He rests his free hand on Dean’s arm. It’s a steady hold, and it grounds him.

“But I heard it,” Sam admits. “And I broke the wards. I let _everything_ in.”

“What does that mean, Sam? I don’t know what that means.” Dean shrugs, shakes his head. “What any of this means.”

“It means I’m here, now.” Sam raises his other hand, twirls the feather in Dean’s face. “And this means Freedom. For both of us.”

“Sam.”

“Dean, when I was….below. With Lucifer and Michael and Adam. It wasn’t like anything I’ve ever known. It _wasn’t_ pain or misery or anything. It just _was_. But all around us, me, was blood and agony. And every day, I watched it. Couldn’t understand why I wasn’t a part of that. I didn’t even know where the others where, mostly. All I heard were nonsense words and distant whispers.”

“Michael came to me, told me that I didn’t belong. That I wasn’t _worthy_ of peace or love or,” Sam pauses. Dean watches Sam’s eyes grow distant as he remembers. “That my place was out there, beyond the bars of Lucifer’s cage. Out where souls are twisted and spun and broken until there’s nothing left but hollow darkness.” Sam’s eyes re-focus, shift back to Dean. “Like what they tried to do to you ”

Images of his own time in Hell flicker through Dean’s mind. He can still feel the oily slickness slither over the remains of his soul.

Sam shakes Dean slightly, his face breaking into a smirk. “I told him to go fuck himself. That he was a lying sack of shit. I didn’t belong out there, and neither did you. And you.” Sam shakes Dean again. “You aren’t any of that.”

“Then Adam came to me. He said he was _happy_. He…went somewhere, I don’t know where. But I didn’t see him, again. Worse, I guess, I didn’t hear him again.”

Sam breathes deeply through his nose, continues, “Next, Lucifer came to me. He didn’t say anything at first. Just stood there, watching me. He held out two closed fists, told me to pick one.”

Dean can feel Sam’s hand trembling, see his whole body begin to shake with emotion. Sam drops his head, speaks softly, “I didn’t choose either for days and days. I don’t know, probably longer, I guess. I didn’t want to. Every time I made a choice in my life, it was the wrong one. But —“ he chokes out a sob, works to control himself, “I never really had a choice, did I? Lucifer showed me that. Azazel made sure of it. Fucking cherubs forcing mom and dad together. Brady, Meg, Ruby, Michael.”

Dean whispers, “I know.”

“And that’s when it hit me, Dean.” Sam looks up, tears shining in his eyes, but his voice strong, “Lucifer didn’t care, anymore. I was useless to him. He couldn’t get out with Lilith, gone. He couldn’t walk topside with me below. All he had, all he ever had, was that cage. And now he had Michael to play with. I was less than useless to him, I was _pointless_.”

“But a discarded angel is still an angel. So I chose. For the first time in my whole fucking life, I got a choice, and I chose. Peace or Freedom.”

Dean’s mind tumbles and turns as he re-plays the last year of their lives together. How clueless he’d been to Sam’s suffering. He’d watched his brother scream and cry and flay his skin to the muscle. But Dean had never realized Sam did those things because he was _here_. Why hadn’t he spared himself the pain? It was stupid. So goddamn stupid. Dean wasn’t worth that. Dean is stupidly, selfishly grateful for Sam in his life, right now, even after everything he knows. _But he’s not worth it._

“You should have chosen Peace, Sammy.”

“No.” Sam leans his forehead against Dean’s, whispers, “The only peace I will ever know is with you. You’re my brother, Dean. And I’ll keep saying this until you get it through your head: There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.”

“You traded one cage, for another.”

“Not anymore.” Sam pulls back, shows the feather to Dean again. “When I broke the wards, I knew Raphael would come.” Sam jerks his head toward the silent Castiel, “Don’t blame him. He’s the one who talked me out of my original plan.”

“You had a plan?”

“Yeah, to kill Raphael for --” Sam twirls the feather “-- this. Castiel’s the one who told me I only had to pluck it.”

“The point being?”

“The point being that whoever has the feather of an angel cannot be harmed. By Heaven. By angels. Even fallen, discarded angels.”

Dean pushes Sam away. His anger returns, flares into a rage. “If it was that simple, if that’s all we had to all this time, _all these years_ , then why didn’t Castiel offer one up?”

Dean rounds on Castiel, his words venomous. “You raised me out of Hell, let Michael possess Adam. You brought Sam here under one of your wings for fuck’s sake, _and_ kept me from helping Sam fight that dick, Raphael! And all of it could have been prevented by a _single fucking feather_? Why didn’t you _help_?”

“I did, Dean.”

Castiel’s calm, almost patronizing tone is nearly more than Dean can bear. He holds himself very still. “You insufferable bastard.”

“Sam had to fight that battle on his own, I couldn’t help him,” Castiel explains. It would be….unseemly for me to outwardly aid in the defeat of an angel. And I have no desire to fight my brother.”

Castiel steps close to Dean, almost touching. “I _saved_ you by surrounding you with Noah’s Dove Blood.” Castiel nods towards Sam, “Just like he saved Lisa and Ben by encircling them in the blood.”

Castiel’s eyes turn cold as he continues, “And I gave you a feather, once. The summer you had nothing to hunt. But you threw it away. I couldn’t give you another. _So you should be more grateful_.“

Dean is stunned. He remembers that stifling hot summer. He remembers his father’s near silence, Sam’s obsession with books on birds. And he remembers the feather. Finding it. Losing it. Giving it to Sam. And when Sam gave it back, Dean had burned it. He hadn’t known. He hadn’t _known_.

Dean manages to murmur, “Shit,” before his knees give way. He staggers over to the wall for support. “Isn’t this just fucking _perfect_.”

“It is.”

Dean raises weary eyes to Sam, wonders if Sam’s gone back ‘round the bend.

“What the fuck?”

Sam rummages through the mess of tools Dean dumped on the floor. “I loved that summer, Dean. People weren’t dying, Dad and I weren’t fighting, you and me, we did pretty good. I spent years trying to find that feeling again. Thought I could find it at college.” Sam sweeps aside nuts and bolts, his voice nearly lost in the sound of scraping metal. “But I wasn’t ever going to. Because,“ Sam pauses, slides his gaze to Dean, “you weren’t there. So when Lucifer cast me back up here, and I was…I was kinda lost there for a while, it’s what brought me home, back to you.”

Sam stops rummaging, smiles triumphantly, and reveals a frayed piece of twine. Dean watches incredulously as Sam methodically ties the twine to the feather and hangs it from the Impala’s rearview mirror. “I remembered that summer, and, I don’t know, things started to hurt less.” Sam drops his hands, looks around the Impala. “It still hurts. But now,” he extends a finger, brushes Raphael’s stolen feather, turns back to Dean. “We have this,” he says simply.

“I don’t –“

“We won, Dean. Freedom from Hell _and_ Heaven.”

When Dean throws his hands in the air, Sam replies “We still got the family business. You know,” Sam smirks, “saving people, hunting things.”

Dean looks from Sam to Castiel, and back. He’s looking for some sign that there’s another shoe to drop. There’s _always_ another shoe to drop. Nothing in their lives is this easy.

Off Dean’s look of disbelief, Sam crouches in front of him. “C’mon, Dean. We got work to do.”

“This what you really want, Sammy?”

“I chose, Dean.”

~*~


	5. Chapter 5

Years later, when Dean’s mind drifts back to the last night he spent with Lisa and Ben, the memory is faint, almost ephemeral. It rarely solidifies into something tangible. Dean thinks he should feel remorse for how little he remembers that night. But then, when he least expects it, Lisa’s words wash over him, as clear and bright and painful as the morning he and Sam left. She stood in the backyard, Ben at her side, and framed Dean’s face with her hands.

“I don’t regret any of it, Dean. And neither should you. Being here, it’s what you needed, what Sam needed. I don’t regret it. Because –“

“Because you –“

Lisa manages a watery laugh. “Dean, still with the interrupting. Shut up, I swear to God. Listen, I could have kicked your bony ass to the curb any day. Sam’s too.” A tinkling laugh. She smiles. “Well, _before_ he got his head on a little more straight, maybe. But I care about you two because _you deserve it_. I’m not gonna tell you it was all rainbows and pony rides these last two years, _especially_ these last few days.” Lisa slides her hands down to Dean’s shoulders. She squeezes them affectionately, then takes his hands in hers. lowers them to his hands. “But everyone should get a little kindness in this world, and that’s the least I could do for the two of you.”

Lisa releases his hands, points to where Sam’s sitting in the Impala. The car is already running, the windows down, the gas tank full. Ready and waiting.

“But it’s time for you two to go. You be safe, and stop by when you can. Just don’t come calling when you’re in a million pieces, again. We’ve already done that. And _definitely_ don’t come calling covered in blood. I’m really over bleaching everything in sight. Got it?”

Dean nods. He struggles to find his voice, to tell her how thankful he is, and how sorry. He can’t, so he nods. Sam is the one who’s always had a way with words. Dean pulls Lisa into a crushing hug. He hopes she feels everything he can’t say. When her arms encircle his neck, he thinks maybe she does.

“Cas should be by later today.” Dean tells her, waving a hand at the lopsided, busted remains of her house. “You know, to fix all that.”

Lisa laughs. “Yeah, he said something about needing to research neo-Colonial architecture, first.”

Ben’s been silent this whole time. He was silent most of the previous night. Dean’s not sure, but he thinks Ben’s last word might have been his awe-struck _damn_ when he saw the damage Sam did to his home. Dean kneels down, slaps him on the shoulder. “You gonna be alright, buddy?” he asks.

Ben looks at him, and Dean’s heart breaks a little. The kid looks like he’s aged a hundred years overnight. But then his face breaks into a dazzling smile. “Yup,” he says. “I’ve got the _coolest_ stories to tell now.”

Dean tenses. “Ben –“ he warns

“Don’t worry, Dean.” Ben rolls his eyes. “I’m just gonna say they’re ghost stories at soccer camp. Telling them about how Sam staked a vampire and cut off his head beats the hell out of, ‘ _I am the ghost of the bloody finger_.’ If I do it right, I might even get some of the other kids to pee their pants.”

Ben’s so ridiculously pleased with himself, Dean can only laugh. He gives the kid a hug, whispers in his ear. “You need us, you let us know.” Then pulls away, adds, “Just make sure you don’t let them draw a dick on your face, all right?”

Lisa groans, and mutters _Jesus_ , but when Dean glances up there’s amusement in her eyes.

Dean gives one final wave and settles behind the wheel of the Impala. The seat seems to sigh under his weight, and his hands grip the well-worn steering wheel easily. Beside him, Sam flicks the dangling feather and grins.

“You ready, Sammy?”

“Always, Dean.”

 

 _End_.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Rambling Author's Notes and Thanks:**
> 
> Part of this story started off as a simple fic prompt fill for oh_sam site on livejournal. It was just a series of paragraphs that weren't quite gelling together. Meanwhile, every morning, I sit on my balcony enjoying _several_ cups of coffee and listen to the various song birds that make their nests in the copse of trees behind me. Sometimes they are so loud and insistent, I wonder if they could all just shut up for a moment. Which led me to think - what if that's the _only_ thing some one hears? Would it drive them up a wall? Or would it actually be calming? So I idly started to explore that in another set of random paragraphs that weren't quite gelling together.
> 
> Several futile attempts to get either story to work resulted in me deciding that maybe the problem was they belonged together. Thus, this story was born.
> 
> Along the way, I pulled heavily from two television shows and several songs. The most obvious influence is _Buffy_. In particular, the arc of her return from Heaven and how miserable she is back amongst the living. My wink and nod to this is in vampires' last name, _Falls_ (a counterpoint to _Summers_ ).
> 
> A lot less consciously, I referenced the River Tam character in _Firefly_ insomuch as Sam tends to talk in riddles. _He_ thinks he's being perfectly clear despite everyone else's confusion. Though Dean does understand him once and a while - how could he not? ;)
> 
> Songs like _Noah's Blood_ by 10,000 Maniacs, _Let Go_ by Frou Frou, _Foolish Games_ by Jewel, _Private Universe_ by Crowded House, and _Sunny Came Home_ by Shawn Colvin were on high rotation while I wrote this. The influence of the first song is fairly obvious ;) In fact, that was the working title for a while. The songs aren't actually a soundtrack, per se; they merely served as guide posts for me - beats, lines, and concepts I wanted to hit in the story. I'll spare you the endless droning on I could do about that. Suffice to say this was written partially as an homage to them.
> 
> The brief Latin Sam speaks was cobbled together as best I could from various internet sources. Hopefully, I didn't completely slaughter it.
> 
> A huge thank you to buffyaddict13. She helped me clarify Dean's voice, wrestled my paragraph long sentences into bite-size pieces, staged an intervention on my addiction to adjectives, and didn't laugh too hard at my inability to stay within one verb tense. Thank you, sweetie, you saved my butt. I love you more than my luggage <3
> 
> Thanks, also, to uglyduckling_me. She reached through the internet and held my hand for months on end. Her enthusiasm for this story as I sent it to her in bits and pieces kept me chugging onward. And, as always, I am grateful for her last minute eagle eyes. <3
> 
> Any remaining verb errors, blatant grammar mistakes, overwrought prose, and the like is all me.
> 
> To my bescarfed ladies: You're amazing and I love you.
> 
> The art by chosenfire28! You can find it here: http://chosenfire28.livejournal.com/210051.html SO IN LOVE! Simply gorgeous, _gorgeous_ work. Thank you for creating such an amazing piece  <3
> 
> Lastly, thanks to the spn_j2_bigbang mods. Every _zomg_ e-mail was answered promptly and with aplomb. That meant a lot, thank you :)
> 
> And to you, the reader: Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed the story =D


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